Promoting Access in a Mexican-American Museum during the Pandemic: Online Community Events and Robots.

During COVID-19, many museums closed their physical structures and transitioned their exhibits to online platforms for public digital access. As museums reopen, there remains a need for some visitors to attend exhibits and cultural events with minimal risk. This article examines an innovative hybrid platform for museum digital access-personal telerobots to co-explore museums alongside community members. The way it works is as follows: a community member remains at home and remotely logs into the museum robot. A friend/family member is physically at the museum, and once the robot is embodied by the remote user, they can walk around the museum together, talk with each other, interact with artifacts, and experience the exhibits together. Ultimately, the robot user and the visitor can both be immersed in the venue, separate yet together at the same time. This article examines the use of online community events and personal robots in a Mexican-American history, art, and culture museum for cultural exhibits and how these technologies may facilitate the way community members learn, interact, and explore museum artifacts. It also explores the need for best practices on the use of online communities and personal robot technology in museums. This work contributes observations, reflections, and curatorial considerations on both forms of digital media for inclusive museum practices.

The Power of Robot-mediated Play: Forming Friendships and Expressing Identity.

Tele-operated collaborative robots are used by many children for academic learning. However, as child-directed play is important for social-emotional learning, it is also important to understand how robots can facilitate play. In this article, we present findings from an analysis of a national, multi-year case study, where we explore how 53 children in grades K-12 (n = 53) used robots for self-directed play activities. The contributions of this article are as follows. First, we present empirical data on novel play scenarios that remote children created using their tele-operated robots. These play scenarios emerged in five categories of play: physical, verbal, visual, extracurricular, and wished-for play. Second, we identify two unique themes that emerged from the data-robot-mediated play as a foundational support of general friendships and as a foundational support of self-expression and identity. Third, our work found that robot-mediated play provided benefits similar to in-person play. Findings from our work will inform novel robot and HRI design for tele-operated and social robots that facilitate self-directed play. Findings will also inform future interdisciplinary studies on robot-mediated play.

Evaluation of the Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR) for Social Interaction and Learning.

Tele-operated social robots (telerobots) offer an innovative means of allowing children who are medically restricted to their homes (MRH) to return to their local schools and physical communities. Most commercially available telerobots have three foundational features that facilitate child-robot interaction: remote mobility, synchronous two-way vision capabilities, and synchronous two-way audio capabilities. We conducted a comparative analysis between the Toyota Human Support Robot (HSR) and commercially available telerobots, focusing on these foundational features. Children who used these robots and these features on a daily basis to attend school were asked to pilot the HSR in a simulated classroom for learning activities. As the HSR has three additional features that are not available on commercial telerobots: (1) pan-tilt camera, (2) mapping and autonomous navigation, and (3) robot arm and gripper for children to "reach" into remote environments, participants were also asked to evaluate the use of these features for learning experiences. To expand on earlier work on the use of telerobots by remote children, this study provides novel empirical findings on (1) the capabilities of the Toyota HSR for robot-mediated learning similar to commercially available telerobots and (2) the efficacy of novel HSR features (i.e., pan-tilt camera, autonomous navigation, robot arm/hand hardware) for future learning experiences. We found that among our participants, autonomous navigation and arm/gripper hardware were rated as highly valuable for social and learning activities.

Emerging Telepresence Technologies in Hybrid Learning Environments.

The last several years have seen a strong growth of telerobotic technologies with promising implications for many areas of learning. HCI has contributed to these discussions, mainly with studies on user experiences and user interfaces of telepresence robots. However, only a few telerobot studies have addressed everyday use in real-world learning environments. In the post-COVID 19 world, sociotechnical uncertainties and unforeseen challenges to learning in hybrid learning environments constitute a unique frontier where robotic and immersive technologies can mediate learning experiences. The aim of this workshop is to set the stage for a new wave of HCI research that accounts for and begins to develop new insights, concepts, and methods for use of immersive and telerobotic technologies in real-world learning environments. Participants are invited to collaboratively define an HCI research agenda focused on robot-mediated learning in the wild, which will require examining end-user engagements and questioning underlying concepts regarding telerobots for learning.

A Theoretical and Qualitative Approach to Evaluating Children's Robot-Mediated Levels of Presence.

Each year, 2.5 million children in the United States are homebound due to illness. This paper explores the possible implications of being homebound for child development and well-being, drawing on Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems theory of human development and Ryan and Deci's self-determination theory. This paper also explores the potential role of robotic avatars and robot-mediated presence to provide homebound children with more appropriate developmental experiences. To better understand their robot-mediated developmental experiences, what is known about human development and human psychology in organic environments (i.e., bioecological systems theory and self-determination theory) is synthesized with concepts of presence theory from virtual environments. These theoretical supports form the foundation of a framework to evaluate the robot-mediated presence of homebound children. Findings from the first systematic, multicase study on the robot-mediated presence of homebound children in schools provide empirical data to inform three identified levels of presence: copresent, cooperating, and collaborating. This framework provides a first step to consistent evaluation of robot-mediated presence and engagement for this population. Understanding the social contexts and developmental needs of homebound children and how they can be achieved via robotic avatars will aid in developing more effective interventions for improved social supports and technological systems.

Going to School on a Robot: Robot and User Interface Design Features That Matter.

Telepresence robots have recently been introduced as a way for children who are homebound due to medical conditions to attend their local schools. These robots provide an experience that is a much richer learning experience than the typical home instruction services of 4-5 hours a week. Because the robots on the market today were designed for use by adults in work settings, they do not necessarily fit children in school settings. We carried out a study of 19 homebound students, interviewing and observing them as well as interviewing their parents, teachers, administrators, and classmates. We organized our findings along the lines of the various tasks and settings the child is in, developing a learner-centered analytic framework, then teacher-, classmate-, and homebound-controller-centered analytic frameworks. Although some features of current robots fit children in school settings, we discovered a number of cases where there was a mismatch or additional features are needed. Our findings are described according to analytic frames that capture user experiences. Based on these user-centered findings, we provide recommendations for designing the robot and user interface to better fit children using robots for school and learning activities.