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While thinking aloud has been reported to positively affect problem-solving, the effects of the presence of an embodied entity (e.g., a social robot) to whom words can be directed remain mostly unexplored. In this work, we investigated the…
The main motivation for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is efficient interfaces to computers, and for the interfaces to be natural and truly useful, it should provide coverage for a large group of users. The purpose of these tasks is to…
Large-language models (LLMs) hold significant promise in improving human-robot interaction, offering advanced conversational skills and versatility in managing diverse, open-ended user requests in various tasks and domains. Despite the…
Robot sound, encompassing both consequential operational noise and intentionally designed auditory cues, plays an important role in human-robot interaction (HRI). Developing a deeper understanding of how robot sounds influence human…
Driven by ongoing improvements in machine learning, chatbots have increasingly grown from experimental interface prototypes to reliable and robust tools for process automation. Building on these advances, companies have identified various…
Robustness to environmental noise is important to creating automatic speech emotion recognition systems that are deployable in the real world. Prior work on noise robustness has assumed that systems would not make use of sample-by-sample…
A few decades of work in the AI field have focused efforts on developing a new generation of systems which can acquire knowledge via interaction with the world. Yet, until very recently, most such attempts were underpinned by research which…
Notwithstanding the tremendous progress that is taking place in spoken language technology, effective speech-based human-robot interaction still raises a number of important challenges. Not only do the fields of robotics and spoken language…
Embodied robots which can interact with their environment and neighbours are increasingly being used as a test case to develop Artificial Intelligence. This creates a need for multimodal robot controllers that can operate across different…
The number of robots deployed in our daily surroundings is ever-increasing. Even in the industrial set-up, the use of coworker robots is increasing rapidly. These cohabitant robots perform various tasks as instructed by co-located human…
Older adults living alone have a number of challenges, and robots can help with some of them--by providing reminders, initiating activity, or offering comfort. As part of developing a cat robot with limited assistive functions, we designed…
The speed and accuracy with which robots are able to interpret natural language is fundamental to realizing effective human-robot interaction. A great deal of attention has been paid to developing models and approximate inference algorithms…
Human acceptance of social robots is greatly effected by empathy and perceived understanding. This necessitates accurate and flexible responses to various input data from the user. While systems such as this can become increasingly complex…
Recognition of social signals, from human facial expressions or prosody of speech, is a popular research topic in human-robot interaction studies. There is also a long line of research in the spoken dialogue community that investigates user…
Language is an effective medium for bi-directional communication in human-robot teams. To infer the meaning of many instructions, robots need to construct a model of their surroundings that describe the spatial, semantic, and metric…
Recent years have seen an increasing number of applications that have a natural language interface, either in the form of chatbots or via personal assistants such as Alexa (Amazon), Google Assistant, Siri (Apple), and Cortana (Microsoft).…
As robots are increasingly deployed in real-world scenarios, a key question is how to best transfer knowledge learned in one environment to another, where shifting constraints and human preferences render adaptation challenging. A central…
Collaborative robots must effectively communicate their internal state to humans to enable a smooth interaction. Nonverbal communication is widely used to communicate information during human-robot interaction, however, such methods may…
We explore the use of inner speech as a mechanism to enhance transparency and trust in social robots for dietary advice. In humans, inner speech structures thought processes and decision-making; in robotics, it improves explainability by…
Nonverbal visual symbols and displays play an important role in communication when humans and robots work collaboratively. However, few studies have investigated how different types of non-verbal cues affect objective task performance,…