Sustaining interaction dynamics and engagement in dyadic child-robot interaction kinesics: lessons learnt from an exploratory study

Motivated by questions of interaction design for human-robot interaction (HRI), an exploratory initial study was carried out with children and a robotic "pet" in order to improve understanding the design space for interaction with an autonomous robot. Interactions were very unstructured in a relaxing and familiar environment. The scope of the study was quite broad in order to cover a wide range of possibly relevant types of interactions. The study of the resulting interaction dynamics - with rich and with poor contextual cues - identifies key factors for interaction design and suggests some guidelines for initiating, maintaining, and regulating on-going interaction. In particular, non-directed and directional feedback, turn-taking rhythms, and the interactional kinesics of human-robot dyads are discussed dimensions for HRI design. This is hoped to enable future studies to specifically address in more depth the issues raised in this paper.