A shape of play to come: Exploring children's play and imaginaries with robots and AI

The study investigates how kindergarten children play with the robot called Blue-Bot and their thoughts on a future involving robots and artificial intelligence (AI). The research questions are: 1) How do children engage in play-based kindergarten activities with the robot? 2) What are children’s emerging ideas about their future with AI and robots?

The study shows that children used the robot in many different ways in their play, and they integrated it into all 16 play categories described in Bob Hughes’ taxonomy. This included everything from simple exploration of the robot’s functions to more complex imaginative play, where the robot took on various roles in the children’s stories and scenarios. The study also found that the children had developed an understanding of robots and AI, and they envisioned robots being useful in the future, for example, to perform everyday tasks. At the same time, the children were aware of the limitations of robots and set boundaries for how much they wanted to include robots in their play.

The study is based on seven months of ethnographic work with the implementation of the floor robot Blue-Bot in two kindergarten groups in Stockholm, Sweden. A total of 38 children participated: sixteen 1-2-year-olds and twenty-two 3-5-year-olds, both groups with three teachers. The researchers visited the groups weekly for play-based activities with the robot for 1-2 hours. Fifteen days of observations were conducted with 1–2-year-olds (13.9 hours of video), and 17 days of observations were conducted with 3–5-year-olds (11.3 hours of video). The material was supplemented with field notes, drawings and images. In addition, the 3-5-year-olds were interviewed in six groups each consisting of 2 to 3 children, resulting in 1.4 hours of recording. The interviews were qualitative, and they consisted of relatively open-ended questions and a flexible structure.

Samuelsson, R. (2023). A shape of play to come: Exploring children's play and imaginaries with robots and AI. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 5, 100173.