STB: Human-dependent Sociable Trash Box

We developed a Sociable Trash Box (STB) as a children-assisted robot able to collect the trash in order to convey its intentional stance to children. The STB is capable of engaging manifold affiliation behaviors to build a social rapport with children by collecting the trash around their environment. In particular, the STB is a child-dependent robot that walks alone in a public space for tracing humans and trash for the purpose of collecting the trash. The robot is incapable of collecting the trash by itself, and it engages by using interactive behaviors and vocalizations to make a social coupling with children based on the robot´s anticipation to accomplish its goal. The present experiment investigates how STB behaviors are effective in conveying intentions to evoke children´s social interactions and to assist in collecting the trash in their environment.