Designing a relational social robot toolkit for preschool children to explore computational concepts

Designing toolkits for teaching programming concepts to children using robots has received growing attention in recent years. However, teaching preschool children computational concepts, such as non-determinism and event-based programming, presents particular challenges. We have developed a programming toolkit that is embedded in an interpersonal interaction context with a social robot. The toolkit enables young children to program social robots by \"teaching\" them to interact. In order to \"teach\", the children show the robot rules designed with reusable vinyl stickers. In doing so, children can experiment with computational concepts while having a playful interaction with the social robot. We present the purpose, context, and design of the social robot toolkit (SoRo Toolkit), and an evaluation performed with 22 preschool children. We show that children have an engaging experience designing and \"teaching\" social interaction rules to the robot, orchestrating give-and-take exchanges, and delighting in how the robot engages with them as they explore computational ideas.