A team from the University of California at San Diego conducted anexperiment in which two robots, RUBI and QRIO, interacted with 12children aged 18 to 24 months old for 45 sessions over five months.
Their study, 'Socialisation between toddlers and robots at an earlyeducation center', is part of the RUBI Project, which aims to developand evaluate interactive computer devices to assist early educationteachers.
Co-author Dr Javier Movellan said, 'RUBI looks a bit like a Teletubbyand its main goal is to teach children age-appropriate materials. QRIOis more like a child and it was treated as such. The children referredto RUBI as "mama RUBI" and QRIO as "baby QRIO". Overall, QRIO elicitedmore social-like behaviours than RUBI did.'
QRIO is 23 inches tall and assisted by a human operator, with sixdifferent behavioural categories - dance, sit down, stand up, lay down,hand gesture and giggle.
Dr Movellan said, 'Based on detailed analysis of the interaction betweenthe children and QRIO, we hypothesized that toddlers may keep track oftouch in the time scale of five minutes as an indicator of socialconnectedness. If you get touched a lot, this hypothetical brain systemwould send signals that indicate to the child that he/she is wellconnected socially.'
He added, 'I think educational robots will become an essential tool andwould help the development of happy, smart and well-adjusted children.However, we need to get there in a very careful manner.'
In Britain, early years consultant Jennie Lindon said, 'This studydemonstrates the sophistication of very young children. However, thereis a real risk that parents and practitioners are being encouraged todelegate communication to equipment. And what has happened to personalinteraction, if we need a project with robots to show that toddlers needtouch, responsiveness and child-friendly timing?'