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Gaze in Human-Robot Communication
Edited by Frank Broz, Hagen Lehmann, Bilge Mutlu and Yukiko Nakano
[Benjamins Current Topics 81] 2015
► pp. 47–70

Interactions between a quiz robot and multiple participants

Focusing on speech, gaze and bodily conduct in Japanese and English speakers

This paper reports on a quiz robot experiment in which we explore similarities and differences in human participant speech, gaze, and bodily conduct in responding to a robot’s speech, gaze, and bodily conduct across two languages. Our experiment involved three-person groups of Japanese and English-speaking participants who stood facing the robot and a projection screen that displayed pictures related to the robot’s questions. The robot was programmed so that its speech was coordinated with its gaze, body position, and gestures in relation to transition relevance places (TRPs), key words, and deictic words and expressions (e.g. this, this picture) in both languages. Contrary to findings on human interaction, we found that the frequency of English speakers’ head nodding was higher than that of Japanese speakers in human-robot interaction (HRI). Our findings suggest that the coordination of the robot’s verbal and non-verbal actions surrounding TRPs, key words, and deictic words and expressions is important for facilitating HRI irrespective of participants’ native language.

Keywords: conversation analysis, coordination of verbal and non-verbal actions, human-robot interaction (HRI), robot gaze comparison between English and Japanese, transition relevance place (TRP)
Published online: 16 December 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.81.04yam
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