The aims of the study presented in this paper are to find evidence that the customization of a robot increases the engagement interacting with it, and the adaptation of a non-social robotic platform like LEGO Robotics is possible. The study has been done with 7 years old children from primary school level that have been doing daily homework activities conducted by the robot during one month. Results showed us a higher interaction and adaptability to a social robot with the customization.

This paper describes in detail the robot platform used in a rehabilitation program for children with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) under a project to compare a rehabilitation program through robotics (1) with a conventional rehabilitation program directed to parents (2) and a control group where no specific intervention is done (3). As LEGO®has been demonstrated as a useful robotic tool able to enhance children motivation, we have used it attached to an iPod which includes several activities defined by neuropsychologists and customized for each patient. In this paper we present the hardware and the software of this robotic platform and also the description of the activities that have already been proposed to patients. We present results about the use of the robot showing that the drop-out rate is lower in the intervention group with robots than in the program directed to parents.

This paper presents a study on (1) how children experience a pet robot, (2) how they play with it and (3) how children's perceptions on and interaction with pet robots are interrelated. The study features different types of subjective and objective techniques to assess the degree of perceived social entity from self-reports (i.e. questionnaires) and observed behavior. Three short questionnaires and an ad hoc code scheme of 15 low-level micro-behaviors were developed. 28 scholars aged 8 to 12 were observed at school during a play period with a Pleo robot and asked to answer the questionnaires. We found that the different questionnaire based methods were in line each other. Therefore, anyone of them can be used to measure the experience of a social entity. Play analyses showed that the two most prevalent behaviors were clearly social: petting the robot and showing it objects to engage in interaction. Moreover, children spent on average less than one per cent of the session time treating the robot as an artifact. However, significant covariation between the experience of a social entity and observed behavior could not be established.