Human-robot Interaction: Multi-modal Interaction Management for a Robot Companion

The goal of this work was to develop an interaction management system for a mobile robot companion. Such a robot poses a number of new scientific questions in comparison to desktop computer applications. More specifically, the interaction management system of a robot companion should fulfill the following 8 requirements: (1) handle cooperative interaction, (2) enable mixed-initiative interaction style, (3) separate interaction from domain task execution, (4) account for situatedness of the communication, (5) facilitate recognition of interaction initiated by users, (6) make use of different modalities in a meaningful way, (7) enable social behaviors, and (8) contribute to the usability of the entire robot system. The present work proposes a powerful computational model of multi-modal grounding that fulfills the above requirements. This model was implemented for the robot companion BIRON within two Implementation-Evaluation-Cycles. Valuable insights were gained in the user studies carried out in these cycles. This book addresses researchers and developers in the field of human-robot interaction.