While interacting with a social robot, children have a need to express themselves and have their expressions acknowledged by the robot. A need that is often unaddressed by the robot, due to its limitations in understanding the expressions of children. To keep the child-robot interaction manageable the robot takes control, undermining children's ability to co-regulate the interaction. Co-regulation is important for having a fulfilling social interaction. We developed a co-creation activity that aims to facilitate more co-regulation. Children are enabled to create sound effects, gestures, and light shows for the robot to use during their conversation. Results from a user study (N = 59 school children, 7-11 y.o.) showed that the co-creation activity successfully facilitated co-regulation by improving children's agency. Co-creation furthermore increases children's acceptance of the robot.

We are developing a social robot that should autonomously interact long-term with pediatric oncology patients. The child and the robot need to get acquainted with one another before a long-term interaction can take place. We designed five interaction design patterns and two sets of robot behaviors to structure a getting acquainted interaction. We discuss the results of a user study (N = 75, 8–11 y.o.) evaluating these patterns and robot behaviors. Specifically, we are exploring whether the children successfully got acquainted with the robot and to what extent the children bonded with the robot. Results show that children effectively picked up how to talk to the robot. This is important, because the better the performance the more comfortable the children are, the more socially attractive the robot is, and the more intimate the conversation gets. The evaluation furthermore revealed that it is important for children, in order to get familiar with the robot, to have shared interests with the robot. Finally, most children did initiate a bond with the robot.