Toddlers show increased physical activity with a robot playmate moving around the room, finds a new study of 2-3 year olds with a toddler-sized GoBot, a custom, wheeled, foam-padded robot.

I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10640114

From the linked article:

Toddlers show increased physical activity with a robot playmate moving around the room

Parents seeking help in encouraging toddlers to be physically active may soon need to look no further than an inexpensive robotic buddy for their kids, a new study by Oregon State University suggests.

The findings are important because movement plays a key role in the overall health of children, both in youth and later on in adulthood, the authors note.

Researchers observed individual sessions for eight kids ages 2-3 once a week for two months in a playroom that included various toys as well as a toddler-sized GoBot: a custom, wheeled, foam-padded robot designed through a collaboration between the OSU colleges of Engineering and Health.

Weekly sessions with each of the five boys and three girls were broken into three segments.

During one of them, the GoBot was in the room but not active, though the child was free to push and pull the robot around if he or she wanted to.

In another, the GoBot’s movements – basically keep-away maneuvers – were directed by an operator using a PlayStation DualShock4 controller, and in the third segment type, the motion was autonomous. In either scenario, the GoBot rewarded the child for getting close to it by emitting sounds, lights or bubbles.

The results showed that kids’ activity levels, measured by multiple sensors and cameras, were higher in the presence of an active robot.

Oh good. I can automate something to play with my toddler now. 

I can’t imagine my children sitting still. Do they have a robot to help with that?