"BIRON, let me show you something": evaluating the interaction with a robot companion

• Published in: 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583) Vol. 3; pp. 2827 - 2834 vol.3
• Main Authors: Shuyin Li, Kleinehagenbrock, M., Fritsch, J., Wrede, B., Sagerer, G.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway NJ IEEE 2004
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Cognitive robotics; Computer science; control theory; systems; Control theory. Systems; Educational robots; Error analysis; Exact sciences and technology; Human robot interaction; Humanoid robots; Natural languages; Robot sensing systems; Robot vision systems; Robotics; Speech and sound recognition and synthesis. Linguistics; Speech processing; Speech recognition; Human; Tracking; Desire; User interface; Speech recognition; Feedback regulation; Natural language; User behavior; Robotics
• ISBN: 0780385667; 9780780385665
• ISSN: 1062-922X; 2577-1655
• DOI: 10.1109/ICSMC.2004.1400761

Current research on the interaction with a robot is driven by the desire to build intuitive and natural interaction schemes. In order for our robot BIRON to behave naturally we integrated an attention system that enables the robot to search for and eventually focus on human communication partners by detecting and tracking persons. Via a natural language interface the user can then interact with BIRON and teach him new objects or ask him to follow her. First valuation results from 21 users interacting with the robot indicate that users appreciate the natural language capabilities of BIRON. However, users are very sensitive to speech recognition failures even though all of our subjects had prior experience with speech recognition systems. The results also indicate that feedback on the internal status of the robot is extremely helpful for users.