Interactive Problem-Solving with Humanoid Robots and Non-Expert Users

Paper in proceeding, 2025

We study conversational interaction between a humanoid (NAO) robot and a human user, using a glass-box dialogue manager (DAISY). The aim is to investigate how such an interaction can be organized in order for a non-expert user to be able to interact with the robot in a meaningful way, in this case solving a scheduling task. Wecompare two kinds of experiments, those that involve the NAO robot and the dialogue manager, and those that involve only the dialogue manager. Our findings show a rather clear preference for the setup involving the robot. Moreover, we study the level of linguistic variability in task-oriented human-machine interaction, and find that, at least in the case considered here, most dialogues can be handled well using a small number of patterns (for matching user input) in the agent.