In July of 2018, the team at the University Pablo de Olavide and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Seville Spain organized an open session for children aged 5-10 years with the Primary School of the Colegio de San Francisco de Paula in Seville, Spain. The children were encouraged to explore Haru’s capabilities, which also functioned as a familiarization phase for a child-robot interaction study of a child’s voluntary interaction in a collaborative problem solving task. In this way, we align with the current global guidelines about children’s awareness for the emerging technologies that are being designed for them, in consideration with the children’s views, needs and vision regarding robots.

Haru at Jill’s House Memory Care facility (https://jillshousememorycare.com) is a second outreach partner in Indiana USA. The facility provides daycare for children and older adults on the same premises, and focuses on supporting intergenerational interaction. Haru has been demo’ed and evaluated there on a regular basis throughout 2019, and continuing into 2020. Haru’s presence in Jill’s House has provided opportunities for staff, older adults, and children to learn about social robots and contribute to the community-based design of robot capabilities and human-robot interaction activities in the space.

The Indiana University team has been working with the Wonderlab Museum of Science, Health and Technology (https://www.wonderlab.org) to present Haru and social robotics to the public, particularly children and their families. Our collaboration has included several demonstrations of Haru to the public: in June 2018 during the Wonderlab Summer School, in December 2018 during the all-day Robot Take-Over event, and in March 2019 for a daylong event. Several events are planned throughout Spring 2020 season.