In this paper, we investigate the use of a social robot as an engaging interface of a serious game intended to make children more aware and well disposed towards waste recycle. The game has been designed as a competition between the robot Pepper and a child. During the game, the robot simultaneously challenges and teaches the child how to recycle waste materials. To endow the robot with the capability to play as a game opponent in a real-world context, it is equipped with an image recognition module based on a Convolutional Neural Network to detect and classify the waste material as a child would do, i.e. by simply looking at it. A formal experiment involving 51 primary school students is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the game in terms of different factors such as the interaction with the robot, the users’ cognitive and affective dimensions towards ecological sustainability, and the propensity to recycle. The obtained results are encouraging and draw promising scenarios for educational robotics in changing children’s attitudes toward recycling. Indeed Pepper turns out to be positively evaluated by children as a trustful and believable companion and this allows children to be concentrated on the “memorization” task during the game. Moreover, the use of real objects as waste items during the game turns out to be a successful approach not only for perceived learning effectiveness but also for the children’s engagement.

在本文中，我们调查了社交机器人作为严肃游戏的互动界面的使用，旨在使孩子们更加意识到并更好地应对废物回收利用。该游戏的设计目的是在机器人Pepper和孩子之间进行比赛。在游戏中，机器人同时挑战并教孩子如何回收废料。为了使机器人具有在现实世界中扮演游戏对手的能力，它配备了基于卷积神经网络的图像识别模块，可以像儿童那样对废物进行检测和分类，即通过简单地看着它。进行了一项涉及51名小学生的正式实验，以从不同因素（例如与机器人的互动，用户对生态可持续性的认知和情感影响以及回收的倾向。所获得的结果令人鼓舞，并为教育机器人改变儿童对回收的态度画出了有希望的场景。的确，佩珀证明自己是孩子们值得信赖和令人信服的同伴，并给予他们积极的评价，这使孩子们可以在游戏中专注于“记忆”任务。而且，事实证明，在游戏过程中将真实的物体用作废物是一种成功的方法，不仅可以提高学习效率，还可以提高孩子们的参与度。的确，佩珀尔证明自己是孩子们值得信赖和令人信服的同伴，并给予他们积极的评价，这使孩子们可以在游戏中专注于“记忆”任务。而且，事实证明，在游戏过程中将真实的物体用作废物是一种成功的方法，不仅可以提高学习效率，还可以提高孩子们的参与度。的确，佩珀尔证明自己是孩子们值得信赖和令人信服的同伴，并给予他们积极的评价，这使孩子们可以在游戏中专注于“记忆”任务。而且，事实证明，在游戏过程中将真实的物体用作废物是一种成功的方法，不仅可以提高学习效率，还可以提高孩子们的参与度。