Development of a graphical user interface for a socially interactive robot: A case study evaluation

In this paper, we present the development of a graphical user interface for a commercially available humanoid robot to study its interaction with children. The interface has been designed to facilitate the overall operation of the robot, and ultimately improve the interaction with children. Four pilot cases are studied to investigate overall effectiveness of the developed robotic setup in interacting and educating children. Case studies included communication with children in university environment, a day nursery, a junior high school, and at the Winnipeg Children's Hospital. Children and their parents/staffs were asked to provide feedback on how they/their children felt about interacting with the robot. Responses were then translated into quantitative measures. The measures received by each group of children and parents/staffs were compared using the ANOVA test. Results failed to reject the null hypothesis of equality in means of all measures. Therefore, the feedback, provided by both groups using questionnaires, was considered very close to each other. In other words, results indicated that children and parents/staffs expressed great interest in use of the developed system, and believed that such a robot could be a helpful tool in child therapy like autism.