Improving User's Sense of Participation in Robot-Driven Dialogue

TL;DR

This paper presents a travel agent dialogue system designed to enhance user participation and trust in robot-driven conversations by incorporating user engagement strategies and expressive robot behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces methods to improve user participation and comfort in robot-driven dialogues through explicit communication and expressive robot movements.

Findings

Increased user engagement and satisfaction observed.

Enhanced user trust and familiarity with the robot.

Reduced discomfort through timing-controlled robot expressions.

Abstract

In task-oriented dialogues with symbiotic robots, the robot usually takes the initiative in dialogue progression and topic selection. In such robot-driven dialogue, the user's sense of participation in the dialogue is reduced because the degree of freedom in timing and content of speech is limited, and as a result, the user's familiarity with and trust in the robot as a dialogue partner and the level of dialogue satisfaction decrease. In this study, we constructed a travel agent dialogue system focusing on improving the sense of dialogue participation. At the beginning of the dialogue, the robot tells the user the purpose of the upcoming dialogue and indicates that it is responsible for assisting the user in making decisions. In addition, in situations where users were asked to state their preferences, the robot encourages them to express their intentions with actions, as well as spoken language responses. In addition, we attempted to reduce the sense of discomfort felt toward the android robot by devising a timing control for the robot's detailed movements and facial expressions.