Although educational robots have proven effective for children’s learning, how to integrate them into home environments without interrupting parent-child interaction is still unclear. We addressed this gap by proposing a semi-autonomous paraoperated robot designed to be partially controlled by a parent. In contrast to autonomous robots, which may reduce effort at the cost of engagement, we posited that active operation would foster parental involvement. We compared three experimental conditions (no robot, an autonomous robot, and our semi-autonomous robot) among parent-child dyads. Our findings demonstrated that the proposed method significantly increased parental verbalizations compared with the autonomous robot condition, without adding to their perceived workload. These results provide evidence that semi-autonomous para-operated robots are a viable and effective tool for facilitating interactive home learning.
