The PAL project for children with diabetes type I focuses on developing a tool to promote self-management of the children with respect to their illness. Specifically work has been done to create a tool that integrates interaction with a physical robot as well as its virtual counterpart.

I was involved in an experiment investigating whether or not children with diabetes type I developed feelings of friendship towards the physical robot, whether these feelings transferred to the virtual avatar of the robot, and how this affected motivation to use the self-management tool. The results showed that it was essential that children perceived the physical robot and avatar as the same entity in order for feeling of friendship to be transferred from one entity to the other. In addition level of friendship predicted motivation to use the tool.

You can read about this publication in more detail here.