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The University of Cambridge , UK before the pandemic however , anxiety and depression among children in the UK has been on the rise , but the resources and support to address mental wellbeing are severely limited .
Professor Hatice Gunes , who leads the Affective Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory in Cambridge ’ s Department of Computer Science and Technology , has been studying how socially-assistive robots ( SARs ) can be used as mental well-being ‘ coaches ’ for adults , but in recent years has also been studying how they may be beneficial to children .
" After I became a mother , I was much more interested in how children
RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT CHILDREN WITH VARYING LEVELS OF WELL-BEING CONCERNS INTERACTED DIFFERENTLY WITH THE ROBOT .
express themselves as they grow , and how that might overlap with my work in robotics ," said Gunes . " Children are quite tactile and they ’ re drawn to technology . If they ’ re using a screenbased tool , they ’ re withdrawn from the physical world . But robots are perfect because they ’ re in the physical world – they ’ re more interactive , so the children are more engaged ."
With colleagues in Cambridge ’ s Department of Psychiatry , Gunes and her team designed an experiment to
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