Zhao Zhao, McEwen Rhonda
School of Computer Science, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada.
Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Canada.
Front Robot AI. 2025 Aug 8;12:1628089. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2025.1628089. eCollection 2025.
Social robots are increasingly introduced into homes as short-term educational or entertainment tools for children. However, their physical presence and social roles may persist long after their intended use has ended. This study explores how families continue to engage with a child-focused educational robot years after its original deployment.
We conducted a retrospective follow-up study with 19 families who participated in a 2021 in-home deployment of a reading companion robot for preschool-aged children. In 2025, we revisited these families through in-depth interviews to investigate how the robot had been integrated, re-purposed, or preserved over time.
Despite the children outgrowing the robot's instructional content, 18 families had retained the robot. Families described transitions in its role-from an educational device to a symbolic household member-characterized by emotional attachment, care-taking behaviors, and affection. The robot was re-framed as a memory object, integrated into new routines, or passed on ceremonially, akin to a "retirement."
Our findings reveal three key themes explaining the robot's enduring presence: (1) emotional attachment and personification, (2) symbolic and nostalgic value, and (3) practical re-purposing within household routines. This study contributes to long-term human-robot interaction literature by extending domestication theory and emphasizing the importance of designing for the full life cycle of social robots-including end-of-life transitions. It underscores how social robots can become meaningful companions and enduring artifacts of family identity, long after their functional use has ended.
社交机器人越来越多地作为儿童的短期教育或娱乐工具被引入家庭。然而，它们的实体存在和社会角色可能在预期使用结束后仍会长期持续。本研究探讨了在一款以儿童为中心的教育机器人最初部署数年之后，家庭如何继续与之互动。
我们对19个家庭进行了一项回顾性随访研究，这些家庭参与了2021年为学龄前儿童进行的一款阅读陪伴机器人的家庭部署。2025年，我们通过深入访谈回访了这些家庭，以调查随着时间推移机器人是如何被整合、重新利用或保存下来的。
尽管孩子们已经超出了机器人教学内容的适用年龄，但仍有18个家庭保留了该机器人。家庭描述了其角色的转变——从教育设备转变为具有情感依恋、照料行为和关爱的象征性家庭成员。机器人被重新定义为一个记忆物品，融入新的日常活动中，或者像“退休”一样被庄重地传承下去。
我们的研究结果揭示了解释机器人长期存在的三个关键主题：（1）情感依恋和拟人化，（2）象征和怀旧价值，以及（3）在家庭日常活动中的实际重新利用。本研究通过扩展驯化理论并强调为社交机器人的整个生命周期（包括报废过渡）进行设计的重要性，为长期的人机交互文献做出了贡献。它强调了社交机器人在其功能使用结束后很长时间如何能够成为有意义的陪伴者和家庭身份的持久象征。
