Abstract-We present an approach to enhance the interaction abilities of the Nao humanoid robot by extending its communicative behavior with non-verbal gestures (hand and head movements, and gaze following). A set of nonverbal gestures were identified that Nao could use for enhancing its presentation and turn-management capabilities in conversational interactions. We discuss our approach for modeling and synthesizing gestures on the Nao robot. A scheme for system evaluation that compares the values of users' expectations and actual experiences has been presented. We found that open arm gestures, head movements and gaze following could significantly enhance Nao's ability to be expressive and appear lively, and to engage human users in conversational interactions.
In this paper we discuss the design of human-robot interaction focussing especially on social robot communication and multimodal information presentation. As a starting point we use the WikiTalk application, an open-domain conversational system which has been previously developed using a robotics simulator. We describe how it can be implemented on the Nao robot platform, enabling Nao to make informative spoken contributions on a wide range of topics during conversation. Spoken interaction is further combined with gesturing in order to support Nao's presentation by natural multimodal capabilities, and to enhance and explore natural communication between human users and robots.
Abstract-The paper presents a multimodal conversational interaction system for the Nao humanoid robot. The system was developed at the 8th International Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces, Metz, 2012. We implemented WikiTalk, an existing spoken dialogue system for open-domain conversations, on Nao. This greatly extended the robot's interaction capabilities by enabling Nao to talk about an unlimited range of topics. In addition to speech interaction, we developed a wide range of multimodal interactive behaviours by the robot, including facetracking, nodding, communicative gesturing, proximity detection and tactile interrupts. We made video recordings of user interactions and used questionnaires to evaluate the system. We further extended the robot's capabilities by linking Nao with Kinect.
Technological development has made computer interaction more common and also commercially feasible, and the number of interactive systems has grown rapidly. At the same time, the systems should be able to adapt to various situations and various users, so as to provide the most efficient and helpful mode of interaction. The aim of the Interact project is to explore natural human-computer interaction and to develop dialogue models which will allow users to interact with the computer in a natural and robust way. The paper describes the innovative goals of the project and presents ways that the Interact system supports adaptivity on different system design and interaction management levels.
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