A team from the University of California at San Diego conducted anexperiment in which two robots, RUBI and QRIO, interacted with 12children aged 18 to 24 months old for 45 sessions over five months.
Their study, 'Socialisation between toddlers and robots at an earlyeducation center', is part of the RUBI Project, which aims to developand evaluate interactive computer devices to assist early educationteachers.
Co-author Dr Javier Movellan said, 'RUBI looks a bit like a Teletubbyand its main goal is to teach children age-appropriate materials. QRIOis more like a child and it was treated as such. The children referredto RUBI as "mama RUBI" and QRIO as "baby QRIO". Overall, QRIO elicitedmore social-like behaviours than RUBI did.'
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