Multi-robot cooperative behavior for reducing unnaturalness of starting a conversation

Abstract

In a human–robot conversation, it is difficult for the robot to start the conversation just when the addressee is ready to listen to the robot, due to recognition technology issues. This paper proposes and evaluates a method to reduce the sense of that the timing of starting the conversation is bad. In this method, two robots perform a cooperative behavior during a waiting time from the call for attracting addressee's attention to the main utterance the robot want to deliver. To evaluate the effectiveness of this method, we conducted an experiment that compared three conversation initiation approaches: early timing and late timing by one robot, and the proposed approach involving two robots. The results revealed that the proposed method mitigates the bad timing of main utterances as perceived by the participants.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Human robot interaction
• multiple robots for HRI
• starting a conversation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Vstone Co.,Ltd. https://www.vstone.co.jp/english/index.html

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by JSPS KAKENHI [grant numbers 22H03895 and 19H05691].

Notes on contributors

Takamasa Iio

Takamasa Iio received a PhD degree from Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, in 2012. Then, he has worked at Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, ATR, Osaka University, and the University of Tsukuba. Currently, he is an associate professor at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. His field of expertise is social robotics. He is interested in how people's cognition and behavior change through interaction with social robots and how human society changes.

Yuichiro Yoshikawa

Yuichiro Yoshikawa received the PhD degree in engineering from Osaka University, Japan, in 2005. From 2010, He has been an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University. From 2014, he has been a project coordinator of JST ERATO Ishiguro Symbiotic Human–Robot Interaction Project. His research interests include interactive robotics, therapeutic robots for individual with developmental disorders, and cognitive developmental robotics.

Hiroshi Ishiguro

Hiroshi Ishiguro received a DEng in systems engineering from the Osaka University, Japan in 1991. He is currently Professor of Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University ( 2009–) and Distinguished Professor of Osaka University ( 2017–). He is also visiting Director ( 2014–) (group leader: 2002–2013) of Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratories at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute and an ATR fellow. His research interests include sensor networks, interactive robotics, and android science. He received the Osaka Cultural Award in 2011. In 2015, he received the Prize for Science and Technology (Research Category) by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).