Motivating Children to Tidy up their Toys with a Robotic Box

The poster presents the evaluation of our prototype, called “Ranger”, which is a robotic box that aims to motivate young children to tidy up their room. The robot was tested in 14 families with 31 children (2-10 years) using the Wizard-of-Oz technique. We found that the way in which children interacted with the robotic box was impacted by how active it behaved. Significantly more toys were put in the box in the passive robot condition compared to children’s more playful and explorative behavior in the active robot condition. Our results hold important implications for the design of interactive robots for children.