BRIDGE - Social Robots from Childhood to Young Adulthood

OBJECTIVES

• Investigate how variability in children’s behavior—across individuals, groups, and contexts—can be meaningfully addressed through inclusive, developmentally appropriate, and culturally sensitive design approaches, and to compare methodological strategies for capturing and analyzing variability.

• Exchange of advances about human-robot bonding and discussing criteria on how to develop long-term interactions for vulnerable young user groups to establish a bond in education and health care.

• Investigate the impact of robot role framing and adaptive learning algorithms on children's learning outcomes and emotional responses in educational settings, with a focus on real-time personalization and responsiveness to individual needs.

• Foster interdisciplinary collaboration, allowing experts from various fields to share insights and offer constructive feedback on each other’s research, and promoting a more holistic, impactful approach to studying and implementing social robots in educational contexts.

Prof. Barbara Bruno (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)

Barbara Bruno is a Tenure Track Professor and head of the Socially Assistive Robotics with Artificial Intelligence (SARAI) research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), with 10+ years of research experience on human-robot interaction, specifically focusing on older adults and children. As both these groups are characterized by rapid changes, designing robots able to adapt to this variability is both difficult and necessary. In this talk, Barbara will draw from own experiences to discuss whether and how variability can be turned from a pain into a strength.

Prof. Michelle M. Neumann (University of Sheffield)

Michelle M. Neumann (PhD) is a Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield (UK) and conducts research projects with Southern Cross University and Griffith University (Australia). She is an expert in the field of early childhood education, digital technologies (social robots, tablets, apps), emergent literacy development, and does research work in preschool settings. Michelle has experience in using a multi-method approach that incorporates qualitative and quantitative analysis and she has been recognised as lead researcher in Australia, in the field of Early Childhood Education by the Australian Government (2021-2023) and has been successful in gaining research funding. Michelle has developed several early education programs and digital resources for literacy and language learning and published several book chapters and research articles in national and international peer reviewed journals and has had over 10 years’ experience working as a primary and secondary school teacher. She is passionate about leading research teams that seek to understand how young children interact, engage, and communicate with social robots and how social robots could be used to support early literacy and language learning in the classroom. 

Prof. Dr. Elly Konijn (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Elly A. Konijn is Professor of Media Psychology & Social Robotics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. With a background in psychology, media studies, and computer science, she developed the Media Psychology Amsterdam program. Her research covers three interconnected lines: 1) media figures, avatars, and social robots; 2) emotions and media-based perceptions of reality; and 3) media use in adolescents. Her work has been published in top journals, books, and featured in documentaries and public debates. Konijn chaired the International Communication Association’s Information Systems division and was editor of the Media Psychology journal. She has received many awards and over 17.5 million Euros of research grants, including an ERC Advanced Grant (ROBOT-BOND project), KNAW Huibregtsen Prize, NWO/KNAW Eureka Prize and NWO PhD-Talent, Digital Society, and Aspasia grants.

Prof. Dr. Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten (RWTH Aachen University)

Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten is a Full Professor in psychology and director  of the group Individual and Technology (iTec) at the Department of Society, Technology, and Human Factors at RWTH Aachen University. Her research explores interactions between people and AI systems ranging from algorithmic decision-support systems to social robots. She and her team are interested in how known social psychological phenomena and communicative processes evolve in human-AI interaction also going beyond dyadic laboratory interactions and focusing on groups and interactions in the field

Prof. Aylin Küntay (Koç University)

Aylin Küntay completed PhD in Psychology, MIS in School of Information, and postdoc in Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been working at Koç University, Psychology since 1999, and running a lab called Language and Communication Development since 2004, including studies on child-robot communicative interactions. She has been appointed as Prince Claus Chair to Utrecht University in 2012-2014 as a visiting professor. Recently she has been elected to Academia Europea and Science Academy, Türkiye.

Ali Paikan (LuxAI S.A.)

Ali Paikan is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at LuxAI S.A., a leading company in social robotics specializing in Human-Robot Interaction and digital therapeutics for neurodevelopmental disorders.
Prior to this role, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), working in the iCub Facility department. He earned his Ph.D. in Robotics from IIT in 2014. Ali also holds a double M.S. degree from the University of Genova (Italy, 2010) and École Centrale de Nantes (France, 2009), awarded through the European Master on Advanced Robotics (EMARO) program.