Social Robots and Children: A Field in Development

Research on how children interact with social robots is still a young field of inquiry. This chapter sketches how research on child–robot interaction (CRI) has evolved since its beginning roughly 25 years ago. We further describe three main lines in CRI research and, per line, a central concept: first, children’s learning from social robots and the central concept of engagement; second, children’s relationship formation with social robots and trust; and third, children’s conceptions of social robots along with the concept of social robots as a new ontological category. The chapter also identifies challenges in current CRI research: next to suffering from an adult bias, the field is challenged by a lack of genuine CRI theories and an overreliance on frameworks coming from interpersonal research. Finally, we focus on future developments that may offer opportunities for significant contributions of CRI research to our understanding of how children and humans, more generally, interact with social robots. In our view, CRI researchers should more strongly embrace the increasing merger between social robots and smart/connected toys, study social robots in conjunction with communicative robots, and pay more attention to the issues and demands of responsible CRI.