Related papers: Evaluating Speech-in-Speech Perception via a Human…
Legacy (unsupported) robotic platforms often lose research utility when manufacturer support ends, preventing integration of modern sensing, speech, and interaction capabilities. We present the Enhanced NAO, a revitalized version of…
Natural human-robot interaction in complex and unpredictable environments is one of the main research lines in robotics. In typical real-world scenarios, humans are at some distance from the robot and the acquired signals are strongly…
Autism is a developmental disorder that manifests in early childhood and persists throughout life, profoundly affecting social behavior and hindering the acquisition of learning and social skills in those diagnosed. As technological…
We propose a deep learning-based foreign language learning platform, named FreeTalky, for people who experience anxiety dealing with foreign languages, by employing a humanoid robot NAO and various deep learning models. A persona-based…
How should a robot speak in a formal, quiet and dark, or a bright, lively and noisy environment? By designing robots to speak in a more social and ambient-appropriate manner we can improve perceived awareness and intelligence for these…
This study presents a novel robot-led approach to assessing children's mental wellbeing using a Vision Language Model (VLM). Inspired by the Child Apperception Test (CAT), the social robot NAO presented children with pictorial stimuli to…
Speaker identity plays a significant role in human communication and is being increasingly used in societal applications, many through advances in machine learning. Speaker identity perception is an essential cognitive phenomenon that can…
Co-speech gestures enhance interaction experiences between humans as well as between humans and robots. Existing robots use rule-based speech-gesture association, but this requires human labor and prior knowledge of experts to be…
This article presents an application that evaluates the feasibility of humanoid robots as interactive guides in art museums. The application entailes programming a NAO robot and a chatbot to provide information about art pieces in a…
This paper presents an experimental study showing that the humanoid robot NAO, in a condition already validated with regards to its capacity to trigger situational empathy in humans, is able to stimulate the attribution of mental states…
With robotics rapidly advancing, more effective human-robot interaction is increasingly needed to realize the full potential of robots for society. While spoken language must be part of the solution, our ability to provide spoken language…
How human-like do conversational robots need to look to enable long-term human-robot conversation? One essential aspect of long-term interaction is a human's ability to adapt to the varying degrees of a conversational partner's engagement…
The paper presents an experiment on the effects of adaptive emotional alignment between agents, considered a prerequisite for empathic communication, in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Using the NAO robot, we investigate the impact of an…
In their everyday life, the speech recognition performance of human listeners is influenced by diverse factors, such as the acoustic environment, the talker and listener positions, possibly impaired hearing, and optional hearing devices.…
Inner Speech is an essential but also elusive human psychological process which refers to an everyday covert internal conversation with oneself. We argue that programming a robot with an overt self-talk system, which simulates human inner…
In the rapidly evolving landscape of human-robot collaboration, effective communication between humans and robots is crucial for complex task execution. Traditional request-response systems often lack naturalness and may hinder efficiency.…
Silent and whispered speech offer promise for always-available voice interaction with AI, yet existing methods struggle to balance vocabulary size, wearability, silence, and noise robustness. We present NasoVoce, a nose-bridge-mounted…
In a preliminary exploratory study, our goal was to train deep neural network models to mimic children's and/or adults' gaze behavior in certain social situations to reach this objective. Additionally, we aim to identify potential…
Effective spoken dialog systems should facilitate natural interactions with quick and rhythmic timing, mirroring human communication patterns. To reduce response times, previous efforts have focused on minimizing the latency in automatic…
Automated Speech Recognition shows superhuman performance for adult English speech on a range of benchmarks, but disappoints when fed children's speech. This has long sat in the way of child-robot interaction. Recent evolutions in…