"iCub, We Forgive You!" Investigating Trust in a Game Scenario with Kids

TL;DR

This paper explores how children perceive and trust the humanoid robot iCub during interactive game scenarios, revealing gender differences and validating a new assessment tool for trust in human-robot interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel experimental setup and questionnaire to study trust dynamics in children-robot interactions, demonstrating its effectiveness across different ages and genders.

Findings

Children generally perceive iCub positively.

Children tend to trust iCub during interactions, even after mistakes.

Gender influences trust levels after robot errors.

Abstract

This study presents novel strategies to investigate the mutual influence of trust and group dynamics in children-robot interaction. We implemented a game-like experimental activity with the humanoid robot iCub and designed a questionnaire to assess how the children perceived the interaction. We also aim to verify if the sensors, setups, and tasks are suitable for studying such aspects. The questionnaires' results demonstrate that youths perceive iCub as a friend and, typically, in a positive way. Other preliminary results suggest that, generally, children trusted iCub during the activity and, after its mistakes, they tried to reassure it with sentences such as: "Don't worry iCub, we forgive you". Furthermore, trust towards the robot in group cognitive activity appears to change according to gender: after two consecutive mistakes by the robot, girls tended to trust iCub more than boys. Finally, no significant difference has been evidenced between different age groups across points computed from the game and the self-reported scales. The tool we proposed is suitable for studying trust in human-robot interaction (HRI) across different ages and seems appropriate to understand the mechanism of trust in group interactions.