Robot Requests for Help

Updated: Dec. 25, 2025

This repository contains the code used for the paper:

Can You Help Me? The Influence of Robot Requests for Help on Child–Robot Connection

Citation

Teresa Flanagan, Justin Chenjia Zhang, Lin Bian, and Sarah Sebo. 2026. Can You Help Me? The Influence of Robot Requests for Help on Child–Robot Connection. In Proceedings of the 2026 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’26). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757279.3785631

Instructions for Running the Code on macOS

This repository uses the Misty Python-SDK, which allows direct programming of the Misty robot on macOS.

1. Clone this repository

2. Create a virtual environment and install the dependencies listed in req.txt

   (a) RevAI may run into an error due to version incompatibility. If this happens, please refer to the error message and update the function name in that line of the RevAI package

3. Clone the Misty Python-SDK in your laptop:

   git clone git@github.com:MistyCommunity/Python-SDK.git

4. Move the Python-SDK folder into this repository's directory. The folder structure should resemble the following:

   /Robot_Requests_for_Help
     ├── main.py
     ├── TCP.py
     ├── req.txt
     ├── /tablet-game
     ├── /Python-SDK
     └── /venv (optional, created during setup)

5. Update the misty IP address in main.py line 677

6. The tablet-game folder contains Java code for our tablet game, which should be run through Android Studio. When running the codes

   (a) Change the file path in local.properties into your path

   (b) (Optional) To avoid manually input IP address everytime, the default IP can be set in line 27 of app/src/main/java/Socketconnection/TCPClient.java

Instructions for Running the Code on Windows

For Windows setup and instructions, please refer to the Misty Lessons - Desktop Environment