Using child-robot interaction to investigate the user acceptance of constrained and artificial languages

The possibility of improving speech recognition accuracy within human computer and robot interaction by having users interact in a constrained natural language or an artificial language has been explored. However, what has not been evaluated yet is the user acceptance of such forms of interaction. In this paper we discuss two separate but similar studies which were aimed at assessing the usability of constrained and artificial languages in contrast to natural languages. The interaction context was implemented in a game played between children and the iCat robot. We subjectively measured various variables related to gaming experience and interacting in the new languages. Our results reveal that there were no significant differences in the user experience across the two interaction mediums in comparison to natural languages.