This work presents the development of a child-robot interaction(CRI) system for edutainment scenarios, aiming to provide a framework for their design and to simplify access to social robots by educators with non-specialized technical knowledge in this challenging area. Our framework incorporates powerful robotic perception modules for action and emotion recognition of the interacting child, allowing the robot to exhibit empathy and be informed of the child’s activity. Both developed modules are evaluated on respective datasets, outperforming the current state-of-the-art by a significant margin, while retaining low computational cost. The modules are complemented by off-the-shelf automatic speech recognition and synthesis components to further enable and enrich edutainmment-focused CRI. Moreover, the developed framework allows custom CRI scenario-building via a suitable graphical user interface, providing a valuable asset to educators wishing to utilize social robots in the classroom.

A robotic edutainment framework for designing child-robot interaction scenarios

**Session Chair:** Konstantinos Tsiakas





Session E - Assistive Robotic Systems and HRI

technical paper

**About**
 The PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) conference is a highly interdisciplinary conference that focuses on computational and engineering approaches to improve the quality of life and enhance human performance in a wide range of settings, in the workplace, at home, in public spaces, urban environments, and other. Outcomes of this conference have a broad impact in application areas that include, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, energy systems, security and safety, robotics, biomedicine, environment and conservation, and many others. PETRA brings together very different types of technologies to also address important social and healthcare issues for sensitive populations, such as the elderly, persons suffering from chronic conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cerebral Palsy, and other disabilities or traumas.

 PETRA (which means “stone” in Greek) addresses important human living needs. From a technological perspective, PETRA motivates and inspires new scientific thrusts, innovations and discoveries to improve living environments, a particularly important issue, in an increasingly crowded and complex world where the need for inclusiveness and connectivity with the rest of the world is key. For the elderly in particular, PETRA addresses the fact that, as people grow older; they will increasingly rely on technology to be able to prolong staying in their homes and enjoy an independent life.

 The PETRA 2021 proceedings will be published in the ACM Digital Library as part of the ACM ICPS program. The ISBN number assigned to PETRA '21 is 978-1-4503-8792-7

PETRA 2021

The PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA) conference is a highly interdisciplinary conference that focuses on computational and engineering approaches to improve the quality of life and enhance human performance in a wide range of settings, in the workplace, at home, in public spaces, urban environments, and other. Outcomes of this conference have a broad impact in application areas that include, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, energy systems, security and safety, robotics, biomedicine, environment and conservation, and many others. PETRA brings together very different types of technologies to also address important social and healthcare issues for sensitive populations, such as the elderly, persons suffering from chronic conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cerebral Palsy, and other disabilities or traumas.

Petros Maragos

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A robotic edutainment framework for designing child-robot interaction scenarios

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