Table 1.
In the full-text screening, we excluded studies by the first unmet inclusion criteria, i.e., we checked if the publication met the criteria for publication type first, then for the target population, robot type, and finally, the research focus.
Fig 1.
PRISMA 2009 flowchart diagram.
The study selection process, including procedures of identification, and screening of studies. Studies were excluded based on a fixed order of exclusion reasons, including only the first incident of an unmet reason in this diagram.
Fig 2.
The cumulative number of studies per year between 1990 to 29. May 2023.
Table 2.
Countries of the lead authors (N = 29).
Fig 3.
Most of the robots in the review.
Images b, c, e, f, h, j, k, and l are modified cropped versions of the original work. Original images are licensed under CC-BY. For the robots Dr. Robot Inc., Opie, RUBI, and RUBI-6, we could not find images with a CC-BY (or similar) license. The Android and mechanical configurations of the same robot are shown in image (h). The image sources are: a) [70]; b) [71]; c) [72]; d) [73]; e) [74]; f) [75]; g) [76]; h) [77]; i) [78]; j) [79]; k & l); [80].
Table 3.
H = humanoid; NH = non-humanoid; n = number of studies using a given robot.
Table 4.
Research focus in the studies.
The other category includes the concepts of computational thinking (n = 1), reading interest and skills (n = 1), and physical play and emotions during robot interaction (n = 1).
Table 5.
Reported challenges in using robots as a research tool in the included studies.
The category “no limitations reported” refers to studies that have not reported any challenges relevant to using social robots as a research tool.