Robots have massively been introduced in children’s lives, showing promising effects on education and learning. Parallel to this, children’s creative levels show a decline related to different factors, including the standardized teaching and learning dynamics present in traditional school systems. This work aims to investigate if the activities with robots already present in schools affect children’s creativity levels. To study this, we compared creative levels of children across three study conditions: (1) Experimental condition 1: Children performed STEM activities in school by learning how to program robots; (2) Experimental condition 2: Children performed STEAM activities by learning how to design robots; (3) Control condition: Children engaged in a music class. We applied the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP), a validated test that measures creative potential, before and after the intervention. Our results showed that the creativity levels of children increased from pre- to post-testing, revealing the effect of all intervention groups in potentiating creativity. Additionally, results showed that creative levels were significantly higher in the control condition. This result was expected since this condition consisted of an artistic musical intervention where creativity is foreseen to be stimulated. When analyzing the effects of the interventions on the two dimensions of TCT-DP (i.e., adaptiveness and innovativeness), results showed that both the control and the programming condition stimulated innovativeness. This result seems to show that STEM activities can stimulate non-conventional ways of thinking, similarly to creative activities such as a music class. While much has been studied about how STEM activities influence the knowledge of children, little is known if STEM also contributes to the stimulation of their creativity. This study promotes investigation in this topic and shows the potential of using robots to unlock creative potentials in children.

We present the design process of the robot YOLO aimed at stimulating creativity in children. This robot was developed under a human-centered design approach with participatory design practices during two years and involving 142 children as active contributors at all design stages. The main contribution of this work is the development of methods and tools for child-centered robot design. We adapted existing participatory design practices used with adults to fit children's development stages. We followed the Double-Diamond Design Process Model and rested the design process of the robot on the following principles: low floor and wide walls, creativity provocations, open-ended playfulness, and disappointment avoidance through abstraction. The final product is a social robot designed for and with children. Our results show that YOLO increases their creativity during play, demonstrating a successful robot design project. We identified several guidelines that made the design process successful: the use of toys as tools, playgrounds as spaces, the emphasis of playfulness for child expression, and child policies as allies for design studies. The design process described empowers children's in the design of robots.

Creativity is an intrinsic human ability with multiple benefits across lifespan. Despite its importance, societies not always are well equipped to provide contexts for creativity stimulation; as a consequence, a major decline in creative abilities occurs at the age of 7 years old. In this paper, we investigated the effectiveness of using a robotic system named YOLO, as an intervention tool to stimulate creativity in children. During the intervention, children used YOLO as a character for their stories and through the interaction with the robot, creative abilities were stimulated. Our study (n = 62) included 3 experimental conditions: i) YOLO displayed behaviors based on creativity techniques; ii) YOLO displayed behaviors based on creativity techniques plus social behaviors; iii) YOLO was turned off, not displaying any behaviors. We measured children's creative abilities at pre and posttesting and their creative process through behavior analysis. Results showed that the interaction with YOLO contributed to higher creativity levels in children, specifically contributing to the generation of more original ideas during story creation. This study shows the potential of using social robots as tools to empower intrinsic human abilities, such as the ability of being creative.

This paper explores the role of prosocial behaviour when people team up with robots in a collaborative game that presents a social dilemma similar to a public goods game. An experiment was conducted with the proposed game in which each participant joined a team with a prosocial robot and a selfish robot. During 5 rounds of the game, each player chooses between contributing to the team goal (cooperate) or contributing to his individual goal (defect). The prosociality level of the robots only affects their strategies to play the game, as one always cooperates and the other always defects. We conducted a user study at the office of a large corporation with 70 participants where we manipulated the game result (winning or losing) in a between-subjects design. Results revealed two important considerations: (1) the prosocial robot was rated more positively in terms of its social attributes than the selfish robot, regardless of the game result; (2) the perception of competence, the responsibility attribution (blame/credit), and the preference for a future partner revealed significant differences only in the losing condition. These results yield important concerns for the creation of robotic partners, the understanding of group dynamics and, from a more general perspective, the promotion of a prosocial society.

In this paper we sought to understand how the display of different levels of warmth and competence, as well as, different roles (opponent versus partner) portrayed by a robot, affect the display of emotional responses towards robots and how they can be used to predict future intention to work. For this purpose we devised an entertainment card-game group scenario involving two humans and two robots (n=54). The results suggest that different levels of warmth and competence are associated with distinct emotional responses from users and that these variables are useful in predicting future intention to work, thus hinting at the importance of considering warmth and competence stereotypes in Human-Robot Interaction.

This study investigated non-verbal behavior and socioemotional interactions in small-groups of humans and robots. Sixty-participants were involved in a group setting in which they were required to play a card game with another human and two robots (playing as partners or as opponents). The two robots displayed different goal orientations: a competitive robot (named Emys-) and a relationship-driven cooperative robot (named Glin+). Video recordings of the interactions were analyzed in three game play sessions. Eye gaze and socioemotional support behaviors were coded based on Bales» Interaction Process Analysis. Results indicated that gaze behavior towards partners was more frequently displayed to the relationship-driven robot than to the competitive robot and the human partners. In contrast, gaze towards opponents occurred more often towards the competitive robot than to the relationship-driven robot and the human opponents. Socioemotional support occurred more frequently towards partners than opponents, and was also displayed more often towards humans than towards robots. Moreover, in the sessions where the robots were opponents, participants provided more support to the competitive robot. This investigation in small groups of humans and robots provided evidence of different interaction patterns towards robots displaying distinct orientation goals, which can be useful in guiding the successful design of social robots.

This paper describes the design and development of YOLO, a social robot aimed at boosting creativity in children. Creativity is one of the most sought-after competencies as we move from industrialized economies, in which standardized knowledge was imperative, to creative economies, where the ability to innovate is crucial for the workforce. YOLO is a robot to be used by children as a tool to boost new ideas and stimulate their creativity. This paper describes how established educational strategies that enhance creativity were combined with co-designing with children as informants to reach the the prototype design of the robot.

Creativity is one of the most important and pervasive of all human abilities. However, it seems to decline during school age years, in a phenomenon entitled “creative crisis”. As developed societies are shifting from an industrialized economy to a creative economy, there is a need to support creative abilities through life. With this work, we aim to use social robots as boosters for creative-driven behaviors with children.