Software architecture for YOLO, a creativity-stimulating robot

YOLO is a social robot designed and developed to stimulate creativity in children through storytelling activities. Children use it as a character in their stories. This article details the artificial intelligence software developed for YOLO. The implemented software schedules through several Creativity Behaviors to find the ones that stimulate creativity more effectively. YOLO can choose between convergent and divergent thinking techniques, two important processes of creative thought. These techniques were developed based on the psychological theories of creativity development and on research from creativity experts who work with children. Additionally, this software allows the creation of Social Behaviors that enable the robot to behave as a believable character. On top of our framework, we built 3 main social behavior parameters: Exuberant, Aloof, and Harmonious. These behaviors are meant to ease immersive play and the process of character creation. The 3 social behaviors were based on psychological theories of personality and developed using children's input during co-design studies. Overall, this work presents an attempt to design, develop, and deploy social robots that nurture intrinsic human abilities, such as the ability to be creative.

Dynamic Interaction Mechanics CrossAnt

Nowadays, big effort is being put to study gamification and what gamified applications can do to engage players. Therefore, aspects such as the impact social game mechanics have are being approached. In this work, we focus on the generation of certain types of interaction mechanics to lead players to achieve what we think are the three basic types of social interactions: cooperation, competition and individual exploration. This was done by adapting a game called CrossAnt so that certain interaction mechanics could be generated in certain moments. Our results show that although cooperation could be promoted, longer interactions may be needed so that the other types of behavior can emerge.