Neut: Design and evaluation of speaker designation behaviors for communication support robot to encourage conversations

Abstract

In this study, we developed a communication robot that supports multi-party human conversations and helps participants recover from awkward silences. To designate the next speaker, three types of robot behaviors are considered, i.e., promoting a specific individual to talk, promoting all participants to talk, and extracting utterances from participants using undirected muttering. We developed a conversation robot that can selectively designate the next speaker on the basis of these behaviors in a conversation between three humans and a robot (Figure 1). Evaluation tests and case studies were performed relative to speech obligations, pressure to speak and cooperative responses among participants. In addition, methodologies for designing communication support robots that attempt to encourage conversation among reserved participants are discussed.