Authors: R Unnikrishnan, Amol Deshmukh, Shanker Ramesh, Sooraj K Babu, Parameswari Anitha, Rao R Bhavani
Published in: 28th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)
Abstract
We introduce Pepe, a social robot for encouraging proper handwashing behaviour among children. We discuss the motivation, the robot design and a pilot study conducted at a primary school located in the Western Ghats mountain ranges of Southern India with a significant presence of indigenous tribes. The study included individual & group interviews with a randomly selected sample of 45 children to gauge their perception of the Pepe robot across various dimensions including gender, animacy & technology acceptance. We also discuss some HRI implications for running user studies with rural children.
Related project: pepe-social-robot