"Robots and People Collaborating: How to be an Engaging Robot"

Candy Sidner, BAE Systems AIT

When people collaborate, in addition to using language to talk to one another, they also employ a variety of verbal and non-verbal means to initiate, maintain and end their interactions. In face-to-face interaction, this process of "engagement" often occurs through gestures. In this talk I will describe the engagement process, especially how people maintain engagement through mutual looking and conversational nodding. I will report on studies of people collaborating with a robot and show several videos of these interactions. Finally, I will discuss recent research on initiating engagement, and show videos of two different robots finding and engaging a person.