# "It's Not a Replacement:" Enabling Parent-Robot Collaboration to Support In-Home Learning Experiences of Young Children

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.14041 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14041/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 20 Mar 2024.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [The AI-DEC: A Card-based Design Method for User-centered AI Explanations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16711/) (2024)
- [DinoCompanion: An Attachment-Theory Informed Multimodal Robot for Emotionally Responsive Child-AI Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12486/) (2025)
- [Designing Smarter Conversational Agents for Kids: Lessons from Cognitive Work and Means-Ends Analyses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.21209/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Learning companion robots for young children are increasingly adopted in informal learning environments. Although parents play a pivotal role in their children's learning, very little is known about how parents prefer to incorporate robots into their children's learning activities. We developed prototype capabilities for a learning companion robot to deliver educational prompts and responses to parent-child pairs during reading sessions and conducted in-home user studies involving 10 families with children aged 3-5. Our data indicates that parents want to work with robots as collaborators to augment parental activities to foster children's learning, introducing the notion of parent-robot collaboration. Our findings offer an empirical understanding of the needs and challenges of parent-child interaction in informal learning scenarios and design opportunities for integrating a companion robot into these interactions. We offer insights into how robots might be designed to facilitate parent-robot collaboration, including parenting policies, collaboration patterns, and interaction paradigms.