Multi-party Interaction with a Robot Receptionist

Abstract

We introduce a situated interactive robot receptionist that can coordinate turn-taking and handle multi-party engagement and dialogue in dynamic environments, where users might enter or leave the scene at any time. The objective is to create a multi-user engagement policy to manage turn-taking using the robot's gaze, head pose, and verbal communication as parameters and to analyse the participant's perception of the robot. Participant feedback on the system was collected using an online survey that allowed for a comparison of subjective feedback for 4 different interaction policies. The results confirm the hypothesis that a robot is perceived as more intelligent and conscious when it reacts using eye gaze or head pose, once a new user enters the scene. Furthermore, we find that robots need to use a combination of verbal and non-verbal cues to coordinate turn-taking, in order to be perceived as polite and aware of human social norms.