Parents of children with developmental disabilities face significantly higher workloads then parents of neurotypical children due to their higher care giving demands. Consequently, parents of children with developmental disabilities often face emotional, physical, mental, and social health declines. Currently there has been significant research and development of robots for providing care to children with developmental disabilities to address a variety of care giving scenarios. However, it is presently unclear whether parents would be comfortable with robots interacting with their children in these different child-robot interaction scenarios. In this paper, we investigate parental comfort towards robots caring for children with developmental disabilities in a variety of interaction scenarios and the influence of parental negative attitudes towards robots as well as trust on their comfort towards robots in these scenarios. Overall, our findings suggest that US parental attitudes, trust, and comfort towards robots caring for children with developmental disabilities are neutral. Parents were most comfortable with a robot serving as a teaching assistant to children with a developmental disability and least comfortable as a bus driver. Furthermore, trust for robots had a medium positive association with comfort with child-robot interactions and negative attitudes toward robots had a medium negative association with comfort with child-robot interactions.

Exploring Collaborative Game Play with Robots to Encourage Good Hand Hygiene Practises among Children

**Session Chairs: Koen Hindriks, Laura Kunold**

Session IV: Child-Robot Interaction

technical paper

**31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication**
 This conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.
 
 The conference covers a wide range of topics related to Robot and Human Interactive Communication, involving theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies. Papers related to the study of robotic technology, psychology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, human factors, ethics and policies, interaction-based robot design and other topics related to human-robot interaction are welcome.
 
 **CONFERENCE THEME:**
 Social, asocial, and antisocial robots
 
 Robots are starting to populate our lives: at work, in our homes, hotels, shops. However, not everybody is comfortable with robots finding a place in society. For example, people may be afraid that robots will replace humans in their jobs. This belief is exacerbated by the media that, on one side, raise expectations of robots’ capabilities, while amplifying fears and worries on the other side.
 
 In the next years, due to the increasing request for interaction with people in social environments, academic research and market analyses predict that robots will become more and more “social”. But, at the same time, robots may incur the risk of being perceived as “asocial” as their pervasiveness in everyday environments may become an obstacle to social interaction between humans. Or they may even be rejected as “antisocial” if researchers do not take care to develop robots that behave according to the customs and habits of the communities where they are expected to operate.
 
 To prevent this from happening, robotic researchers can no longer take the luxury of being mere technicians. They must be capable of addressing all the challenges raised by future robot-populated communities in a multidisciplinary way. They need to share their knowledge with the public to make people aware of what robots really are, what expectations we can have from them, the risks we may incur, and the possible mitigation plans.
 
 While being open to any kind of contribution related to Human-Robot Interactive Communication, the RO-MAN 2022 conference will emphasize these aspects of robotic research. How can we create robots capable of being welcomed as our assistants and companions in society while, at the same time, not being perceived as “asocial” or “antisocial?” How can we create robots perceived as facilitators of the natural development of human beings and communities, rather than obstacles?
 
 Contributions from different disciplines, not exclusively related to technological development, will be welcomed as crucial to pave the way to global acceptance of future robots with an informed attitude.
 
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IEEE RO-MAN 2022

31st IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication
This conference is a leading forum where state-of-the-art innovative results, the latest developments as well as future perspectives relating to robot and human interactive communication are presented and discussed.

Sreejith Sasidharan

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Exploring Collaborative Game Play with Robots to Encourage Good Hand Hygiene Practises among Children

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