Dialogue Policies for Confusion Mitigation in Situated HRI

TL;DR

This paper proposes a dialogue policy framework aimed at reducing confusion in human-robot interactions by designing linguistic strategies to improve communication and engagement.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dialogue policy design specifically targeting confusion mitigation in situated human-robot interaction scenarios.

Findings

Framework for confusion mitigation in HRI

Discussion of operational challenges

Linguistic strategies for dialogue design

Abstract

Confusion is a mental state triggered by cognitive disequilibrium that can occur in many types of task-oriented interaction, including Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). People may become confused while interacting with robots due to communicative or even task-centred challenges. To build a smooth and engaging HRI, it is insufficient for an agent to simply detect confusion; instead, the system should aim to mitigate the situation. In light of this, in this paper, we present our approach to a linguistic design of dialogue policies to build a dialogue framework to alleviate interlocutor confusion. We also outline our sketch and discuss challenges with respect to its operationalisation.