The Dynamic Interaction Between Engagement, Friendship, and Collaboration in Robot Children Triads

Grounded in child/robot interaction and inclusive education, this research has designed a small socio-technical community of a robot and two children where children play and learn equitably together while they help the robot learn. This designed community was implemented in a school media lab twice a week over three weeks, each session taking about 20 min. We ethnographically observed and video recorded children’s participation in the triadic interaction naturally. The phenomena of interest include friendship development, collaborative communication, and engagement with the community. Data collection is still ongoing, and analysis will occur over this summer. This paper presents the theoretical frameworks and data analytic scheme. We expect to report the findings at the ICQE conference in October.