A Gaze-contingent Dictating Robot to Study Turn-taking

Abstract

In this paper we describe a human-robot interaction scenario designed to evaluate the role of gaze as implicit signal for turn-taking in a robotic teaching context. In particular we propose a protocol to assess the impact of different timing strategies in a common teaching task (English dictation). The task is designed to compare the effects of a teaching behavior whose timing is dependent on the student's gaze with the more standard fixed timing approach. An initial validation indicates that this scenario could represent a functional tool for investigating the positive and negative impacts that personalized timing might have on different subjects.