You can leave your head on: Attention management and turn-taking in multi-party interaction with a Virtual Human/Robot Duo

Abstract

In two small studies, we investigated how a virtual human/ robot duo can complement each other in joint interaction with one or more users. The robot takes care of turn management while the virtual human draws attention to the robot. Our results show that having the virtual human address the robot, highlights the latter’s role in the interaction. Having the robot nonverbally indicate the intended addressee of a question asked by the virtual human proved successful in all cases when the robot was first addressed by the virtual human.