The quality of a companion robot’s reaction is important to make it acceptable to the users and to sustain interactions. Furthermore, the robot’s reaction can be used to train socially acceptable behaviors and to develop certain skills in both normally developing children and children with cognitive disabilities. In this study, we investigate the influence of reaction time in the emotional response of a robot when children display aggressive interactions toward it. Different interactions were considered, namely, pickup, shake, drop and throw. The robot produced responses as audible sounds, which were activated at three different reaction times, namely, 0.5 s, 1.0 s, and 1.5 s. The results for one of the tasks that involved shaking the robotic toys produced a significant difference between the timings tested. This could imply that producing a late response to an action (i.e. greater than 1.0 s) could negatively affect the children’s comprehension of the intended message. Furthermore, the response should be comprehensible to provide a clear message to the user. The results imply that the designers of companion robotic toys need to consider an appropriate timing and clear modality for their robots’ responses.

伴侣机器人的反应质量对于使其被用户接受并保持交互非常重要。此外，机器人的反应可用于训练社会上可接受的行为，并在正常发育的儿童和认知障碍儿童中发展某些技能。在这项研究中，我们调查了反应时间对儿童表现出攻击性互动时机器人情绪反应的影响。考虑了不同的交互，即拾取，摇动，掉落和投掷。机器人产生的响应是可听见的声音，并在三个不同的反应时间（即0.5 s，1.0 s和1.5 s）中被激活。涉及摇动机器人玩具的一项任务的结果在测试时间之间产生了显着差异。这可能意味着对某个动作产生较晚的响应（即大于1.0秒）可能会对孩子对预期信息的理解产生负面影响。此外，响应应该是可理解的，以向用户提供明确的消息。结果表明，伴侣机器人玩具的设计者需要考虑合适的时机和清晰的方式以应对机器人的反应。