Puffy is a learning and playful robotic companion for pre-school children. Designed in cooperation with a team of educators and inspired by Disney's Baymax, Puffy has a combination of features which makes it unique with respect to existing robots used in educational contexts. It is mobile and has an egg-shaped inflatable and soft body; it supports multimodal interaction, reacting to children's gestures and movements, facial expressions and emotions, and communicates using voice, lights, movements in space, and inside-out projections on its body. The paper describes the design of Puffy and discusses an exploratory study that has involved 79 children aged 4-5 at a local pre-school to investigate the Likeability of the robot and how much children enjoyed, engaged to and remembered some specific design features and play activities.
Puffy - An inflatable robotic companion for pre-schoolers
Degiorgi M.;Garzotto F.;Gelsomini M.;Leonardi G.;Penati S.;Clasadonte F.;
2017-01-01
Abstract
Puffy is a learning and playful robotic companion for pre-school children. Designed in cooperation with a team of educators and inspired by Disney's Baymax, Puffy has a combination of features which makes it unique with respect to existing robots used in educational contexts. It is mobile and has an egg-shaped inflatable and soft body; it supports multimodal interaction, reacting to children's gestures and movements, facial expressions and emotions, and communicates using voice, lights, movements in space, and inside-out projections on its body. The paper describes the design of Puffy and discusses an exploratory study that has involved 79 children aged 4-5 at a local pre-school to investigate the Likeability of the robot and how much children enjoyed, engaged to and remembered some specific design features and play activities.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
