A humanoid robot combined with a classroom SNS (social networking service) was introduced into a classroom of remote teaching by elderly persons (aged 78, 83, and 91 years) to school children (aged between 12 to 15 years). The goal was to carry out an ethnographic participatory development of an education support system for elderly teachers and school children. The development formed part of a weekly club activity in an elementary school over the course of six months and consisted of iterating three phases (the experience, reflection, and implementation phases). Through this ethnographic participatory development, we aimed to reveal potential utility and issues in using a social robot combined with a classroom SNS to support remote educational activities between elderly people and children. In addition, the significance of leveraging elderly people in aging societies, especially in education, is highlighted.

High fiving enhances communication in human society. Therefore, a robot that is capable of high fiving could build a better relationship with humans. To design such a robot, it is necessary to determine the requirements of robotic high fives. The goal of this paper is to present such requirements that were identified from the analysis of human high fives, and to show the actual implementations on a humanoid robot. The process of high fiving is composed of two phases: people determine a high five motion according to the current occasion, and then they adjust the motion according to the situation surrounding them. In this paper, we particularly report these motion adjustment functions, which were tested with human participants. Feedback and other requirements for an effective robotic high five are reported.

Work support for elderly people is gaining importance in an aging society. To this end, telepresence robots are expected to provide a promising solution as it could enable people even with some physical difficulties to work from their home. This paper reports our exploratory field trial in which an elderly person gave a lesson about a traditional paper craft to elementary school students over a two-way telepresence robot system. Ongoing development for the system after the trial is described.