Experimental Study on Estimation of Opportune Moments for Proactive Voice Information Service Based on Activity Transition for People Living Alone

Abstract

Smart speakers that listen to a user’s commands and respond vocally are being used in homes across the world. Making smart speakers proactive by delivering information without an explicit command from the user might extend their applications and benefit users. However, such improvements also pose a risk for disturbing users. Therefore, this study aims at developing technology for estimating the opportune moments for information delivery without disturbing the user’s daily activity. To analyze the subjective acceptability of users at home, we prototyped an experimental system that detects the activity transitions of participants based on his/her location and body motion using a depth camera and vocally asks his/her acceptability for information delivery at that moment. We conducted an experiment with three participants that lived alone. The results suggested that the acceptability of users relates to the activity patterns both before and after activity transition.