PeppeRecycle: Improving Children’s Attitude Toward Recycling by Playing with a Social Robot

Using Workshops to Engage Key Stage Three Children in Disposing Food Packaging Sustainably

Sustainable approaches are generally on the rise; yet clear and accessible information relating to appropriate food packaging disposal is typically lacking. Children need to learn sustainable behaviour from an early age; therefore, targeted education is considered a viable option to inform future generations on sustainable food packaging behaviour. This paper explores children's behaviour, preferences and knowledge towards food packaging and the role of workshop-based activities in modulating everyday sustainable food packaging behaviour. Two hundred and thirty children (11-14 years old) partook in food packaging workshops involving interactive activities. Children's most common food packaging issues related to cost, excessive packaging, confusion, motivations, no clear labels, bins being full and no nearby bins. Metal, glass and mixed materials were associated with disposal-related challenges, whereas drinks and fresh produce impacted buying choices from a food packaging perspective. Overall, quiz performance was positive: children were able to identify correctly various food packaging symbols and disposal practices for different food items. In addition, the workshops had a significant impact on learning something new and changing future behaviour. Accordingly, workshops provided an effective approach to engage children in sustainable food packaging behaviour. Future work should focus on strategies to motivate this generation via digital tools to encourage appropriate food packaging behaviour.

Interactive Educational Toy Design Strategies for Promoting Young Children's Garbage-Sorting Behavior and Awareness

Existing educational toys for teaching garbage classification fail to teach about its benefits and positive results. Thus, children do not fully understand the logic behind garbage classification. We summarized the design strategies of garbage classification educational toys according to parents' evaluations of existing toys and the literature on children's memory characteristics. Presenting children with all the system information related to garbage classification is essential for their logical understanding. Using interactive formats and personified images enhances children's desire to play with toys. Based on the above strategies, we designed an intelligent trash can system toy: Incorrect garbage input displays an uncomfortable expression and sad voice. Correct garbage input triggers happy expressions and positive sounds. An animated story then shows how the garbage is treated and recycled into something new. The results of a contrast experiment showed that the accuracy rate of children's garbage classification was significantly raised after playing with the designed toy for two weeks. The toy also promoted children's garbage-sorting behavior in daily life. When seeing trash misclassified, the children would correct the mistakes and take the initiative to share relevant knowledge about garbage disposal.

Scare-Away Risks: The Effects of a Serious Game on Adolescents’ Awareness of Health and Security Risks in an Italian Sample

Digital games can be defined as games supported by audiovisual apparatus and based on storytelling. This work aims to frame video games in the recent perspective offered by positive psychology and focuses on risk perception and on the promotion of protective behaviors in adolescent students, by means of a new Italian ad hoc created digital game named ‘Scare-away risks’ (Scacciarischi). In its storytelling, the different characters must defeat monsters that symbolically represent potential risks in home, school and work contexts. On this basis, the present study assumes that playing video games, as an engaging and motivating activity, can improve the adolescents’ psychological perception of home, school and work risks. To verify these hypotheses, a quasi-experiment comparing students who played Scacciarischi (experimental group) with a control group was conducted. At the end of the game, a questionnaire was administered to 149 participants, balanced for gender, investigating (a) the level of engagement during the game, (b) the perceived risks, (c) the locus of control, (d) the protective behavior intentions. The results showed that playing Scacciarischi is related to higher levels of engagement, internal locus of control, risk perception and protective behavioral intentions. In addition, both engagement and internal locus of control act as precursors of the other two variables. Finally, reflections about the importance of the engaging experience of Scacciarischi in the domain of safety, prevention and health issues are proposed.

A Survey on Recent Advances in Social Robotics

Over decades, social robotics has evolved as a concept that presently covers different areas of application, and interacts with different domains in technology, education, medicine and others. Today, it is possible to envision social robots in tasks that were not expected years ago, and that is not only due to the evolution of social robots, but also to the evolution of the vision humans have for them. This survey addresses recent advances in social robotics from different perspectives. Different contexts and areas of application of social robots are addressed, as well as modalities of interaction with humans. Different robotic platforms used in social contexts are shown and discussed. Relationships of social robotics with advances in other technological areas are surveyed, and methods and metrics used for the human evaluation of the interaction with robots are presented. The future of social robotics is also envisioned based on surveyed works and from different points of view.