Papers
20
Total Citations
291
H-Index
9
About
Divesh Lala is a researcher specializing in spoken dialogue systems, human-robot interaction, and socially intelligent conversational agents. His work centers on developing autonomous systems capable of natural, human-like communication, with a particular focus on the android robot ERICA — a platform that has become central to much of his research into dialogue management, turn-taking, and attentive listening. Lala's most influential contributions address the challenge of smooth, natural conversation between humans and robots. His 2017 paper on attentive listening systems (60 citations) introduced continuous backchannel prediction and flexible turn-taking mechanisms, while his 2019 work (42 citations) advanced real-time turn-taking models to achieve human-like conversational timing in robotic systems. His demonstrations of ERICA as an autonomous android (48 citations) brought these systems into tangible, real-world interaction scenarios. Beyond fluency, Lala has pushed into emotionally aware dialogue, exploring shared laughter generation for empathetic robots and applying conversational AI to detect early signs of Alzheimer's dementia — reflecting a strong commitment to socially beneficial applications. His engagement detection research further underscores his interest in multimodal, responsive human-robot interaction. Collectively, his work represents a sustained effort to close the gap between robotic conversation and genuine human dialogue.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Talking with ERICA, an autonomous android48 citations · 2016
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- 5A Conversational Dialogue Manager for the Humanoid Robot ERICA27 citations · 2018
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