Intricacies of Child–Robot Interaction

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, there has been an upsurge in interest around child–robot interaction (CRI). The possibilities of using social robots for educational or therapeutic purposes in schools, hospitals, and domestic settings have captured the attention of researchers, institutions, and stakeholders alike. Much of the existing research seems to confirm the positive potential of using social robots: for example, robots as tutors or learning companions are seen as engaging devices to foster learning, able to alleviate some of the teacher’s workload; neurodiverse children are thought to benefit from social training with robots; children in need of remote education can benefit from utilizing telepresence robots for interacting with their peers in classrooms.

In recent years, however, voices have been raised that emphasize the need for critical and ethical perspectives on the study and use of social robots for children. The trajectory of technological change is never straightforward. While the potentials for CRI are high, so are the stakes. Like many other technologies targeting children, we are still unsure about the long-term effects of CRI on children’s mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing and development. Through our years of experience in this field, we know that researchers indeed confront several difficulties, challenges, and dilemmas in trying to make the interaction between children and robots work successfully. With this Special Issue, we aim to focus on the challenges of CRI that are widely known—but seldom reported—within the research field. These obstacles belong to a wide range of topics including technical, social, behavioral, user perceptions and expectations, evaluation, qualitative/quantitative data, and ethical issues, among others. 

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue on “Intricacies in Child–Robot Interaction”, which is a response to what we perceive as a lack of studies in CRI that specifically focus on the challenges and intricacies. Authors are encouraged to submit original research articles, case studies, reviews, position papers, and theoretical papers within the following topics of interest:

• Challenges in CRI, including, e.g., design challenges, conducting long-term studies, or designing playful scenarios
• Critical examinations of children’s or relevant stakeholders’ perceptions and expectations of robots
• Breakdowns, errors, and/or deficits in CRI, both technical and social, intended and unintended
• Qualitative studies of cases/children in previously published CRI experiments, excluded from analysis due to robot malfunction or interaction breakdowns
• Ethics in CRI
• Studies of CRI that are never published due to “insignificant or negative results”
• Critical examinations of dominating methods or theories in CRI, and/or proposed methods or theories
• Robot designs or applications that were for some reason abandoned as feasible options for CRI
• Negative and/or undesirable effects of robots for children
• Social and practical challenges of implementing robots in child-focused settings (e.g., classrooms, hospitals, or the home)
• Cultural challenges in CRI
• Critical perspectives on social robots in relation to neurodiverse children, e.g., therapeutic applications for children on the autism spectrum
• Researcher responsibility in CRI

Dr. Sofia Serholt
Dr. Shruti Chandra
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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