Designing a virtual assistant for in-car child entertainment

Driving is an attention-demanding task, especially with children in the back seat. While most recommendations prefer to reduce children's screen time in common entertainment systems, e.g. DVD players and tablets, parents often rely on these systems to entertain the children during car trips. These systems often lack key components that are important for modern parents, namely, sociability and educational content. In this contribution we introduce PANDA, a parental affective natural driving assistant. PANDA is a virtual in-car entertainment agent that can migrate around the car to interact with the parent-driver or with children in the back seat. PANDA supports the parent-driver via speech interface, helps to mediate her interaction with children in the back seat, and works to reduce distractions for the driver while also engaging, entertaining and educating children. We present the design of PANDA system and preliminary tests of the prototype system in a car setting.