Pilot Study for a Robot which Fosters and Creates Children's Individual-level Social Capital

This paper describes the results of the pilot study in which we explored the possible roles of social robots in fostering and creating individual-level social capital in children. In the sense of networks built with others, individual-level social capital is associated with psychological well-being and health. Fostering and creating this for children will be important for future social robots. However, the discussion on robots and social capital has emerged only recently, and it is difficult to overview related research. It is also not clear what needs children and adults such as parents have. Hence, we conducted a survey of related studies and we also asked children and adults at a science museum voluntarily about the expected roles of this kind of robot. From the literature survey, we found that the following roles of robots have been studied so far: 1. Alternative of family and friends, 2. Existence that mediates family members, 3. Existence that mediates friends, and 4. Existence that mediates people who have never met before with each other. From the survey at a science museum, we found that both children and adults expected the four robotic roles that emerged from the literature review.