Robot-Wearable Conversation Hand-off for Navigation

TL;DR

This study investigates seamless conversation hand-offs between social robots and wearable devices for indoor navigation, highlighting user preferences and engagement despite no performance improvements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-device navigation method using conversational hand-offs, emphasizing design considerations for shared voice and state across embodiments.

Findings

Participants preferred wearable-only system.

Conversation hand-offs were engaging despite no performance gains.

Shared voice and state are crucial for effective re-embodiment.

Abstract

Navigating large and complex indoor environments, such as universities, airports, and hospitals, can be cognitively demanding and requires attention and effort. While mobile applications provide convenient navigation support, they occupy the user's hands and visual attention, limiting natural interaction. In this paper, we explore conversation hand-off as a method for multi-device indoor navigation, where a Conversational Agent (CA) transitions seamlessly from a stationary social robot to a wearable device. We evaluated robot-only, wearable-only, and robot-to-wearable hand-off in a university campus setting using a within-subjects design with N=24 participants. We find that conversation hand-off is experienced as engaging, even though no performance benefits were observed, and most preferred using the wearable-only system. Our findings suggest that the design of such re-embodied assistants should maintain a shared voice and state across embodiments. We demonstrate how conversational hand-offs can bridge cognitive and physical transitions, enriching human interaction with embodied AI.