As children grapple with increasing levels of anxiety and stress, teachers have struggled to cater to diverse learning needs in overcrowded classrooms, and clinicians are experiencing an overwhelming caseload. Robotics and artificial intelligence have the potential to transform child development in a way that aligns with contemporary pillars of success. This includes nurturing skills like problem-solving, effective communication, emotional regulation, and more. These technologies also offer support to neurodivergent children and adolescents.
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
SEL is as critical as academics to children’s development, helping them process, regulate, and communicate their emotions as well as develop empathy. Teachers, parents, classmates, and friends will always be an important part of this learning journey to help children hone and apply their social skills, but social robots and AI-powered apps can act as a supplement to these efforts when time, resources, and capabilities fall short. This is backed by the more than 12,500 peer-reviewed studies that show strong evidence that robots help children improve social skills.
Robotics companions like SoftBank Robotics’ Pepper, or the autonomous NAO (which was first released in 2008), are used in schools and clinical settings to teach children emotional regulation, social skills, and empathy. Humans will always be biased, and robots offer a judgment-free environment to practice these skills. Anecdotally, parents of children using Moxie Robot have reported that their kids, who previously struggled with opening up to their therapists, are displaying major progress in this area when using Moxie in conjunction with talk therapy.
Many of these robotic companions, plus AI-powered apps and online games designed for SEL, are equipped with dashboards to track individual progress, provide tailored feedback, and recommend activities based on areas of improvement and interests.
Neurodivergent Children
Robots have shown inspiring promise when it comes to supporting children with autism and other developmental disorders with social and emotional skills. A study conducted by Yale University found that a group of children with autism who used a robot for 30 minutes a day showed noticeable improvement in skills like eye contact or initiating communication.
Further, accessing behavioral health services outside of school can be a barrier to some families due to geography, costs, or availability of local clinicians. AI tools and robots can act as supplements to therapy in instances where care is not readily available. For example, RoboKind makes the facially-expressive robot Milo to support autistic children and their teachers. With Milo, students can work on emotional recognition and social skills, like greeting people or making eye contact. The company found that students engaged with Milo 87.5% of the time vs just 2-3% of the time with a human therapist, demonstrating the technology’s effectiveness in a school setting.
In addition to children exhibiting greater engagement with robots, AI can help clinicians identify patterns or risks to deliver more personalized care. These tools supplement, not replace, human care by alleviating some of the burden amid nationwide staffing shortages and heavy caseloads.
Encouraging Healthy Habits
Robotics and AI can support behavioral health interventions by providing consistent reminders for routines or skills needing attention, feedback, and positive reinforcement. Embodied AI agents like physical robots regularly outperform1 their avatar or digital counterparts. Children like being able to touch and make eye contact and are able to form a friendship2 with something they are sharing a physical space with.
Such robots, like Embodied, Inc.’s Moxie Robot, which is designed to encourage positive behaviors in children, can serve as daily companions, gently nudging children to stay on track with their activities and goals while encouraging them to step away and practice their skills in the “real world.” Moxie has also shown in a pilot study with the Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center that its use is feasible in a pediatric setting.
Robotics and AI are opening new frontiers in children’s behavioral health with capabilities that support cognitive development, emotional regulation, and social skills. From social robots that help children with autism engage in meaningful interactions to AI-driven tools that personalize experiences, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize the way we approach behavioral health and education. As robotics and AI continue to advance, their integration into therapeutic and educational settings will likely grow, making them valuable allies in promoting the mental, emotional, and social well-being of children.
Rachel Baynes, MA, is Head of Clinical Research at Embodied, Inc.
Footnotes
1. Lee, K. M., Jung, Y., Kim, J., & Kim, S. R. (2006). Are physically embodied social agents better than disembodied social agents?: The effects of physical embodiment, tactile interaction, and people’s loneliness in human-robot interaction. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 64(10), 962-973.
Shahid, S., Krahmer, E., & Swerts, M. (2014). Child–robot interaction across cultures: How does playing a game with a social robot compare to playing a game alone or with a friend?. Computers in Human Behavior, 40, 86-100.
Jost, C., Le Pévédic, B., & Duhaut, D. (2012, September). Robot is best to play with human!. In RO-MAN, 2012 IEEE (pp. 634-639). IEEE.
Komatsu, T. (2010). Comparison an On-screen Agent with a Robotic Agent in an Everyday Interaction Style: How to Make Users React Toward an On-screen Agent as if They are Reacting Toward a Robotic Agent. In Human-Robot Interaction. InTech.
Kose-Bagci, H., Ferrari, E., Dautenhahn, K., Syrdal, D. S., & Nehaniv, C. L. (2009). Effects of embodiment and gestures on social interaction in drumming games with a humanoid robot. Advanced Robotics, 23(14), 1951-1996.
Leyzberg, D., Spaulding, S., Toneva, M., & Scassellati, B. (2012, January). The physical presence of a robot tutor increases cognitive learning gains. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 34, No. 34).
2. Beran, Tanya N., and Alejandro Ramirez-Serrano. “Can children have a relationship with a robot?.” In International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationship, pp. 49-56. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010.
Bethel, Cindy L., Matthew R. Stevenson, and Brian Scassellati. “Secret-sharing: Interactions between a child, robot, and adult.” In Systems, man, and cybernetics (SMC), 2011 IEEE International Conference on, pp. 2489-2494. IEEE, 2011.
