Towards Robot Moderators: Understanding Goal-Directed Multi-Party Interactions.
Elaine Schaertl Short, Maja J. Matarić · Human-Robot Interaction · 2015
Introduction Socially Assistive Robotics (SAR) is a growing field dedicated to developing models and algorithms that enable robots to help people achieve goals through social interaction (?). Prior work in this field has focused on one-on-one interactions, but there is interest in extending this work to multi-party interactions. We contribute to the study of multiparty SAR by defining the role of moderator, an agent that is responsible for directing an interaction, but is not necessarily directly participating in the task. We present a computational formalization of the task of moderation as the process by which a goal-directed multi-party interaction is regulated via manipulation of interaction resources, including both physical resources, such as an object or a tool, and social resources, such as the conversational floor or participants’ attention. Finally, we present preliminary results of an analysis of self-moderated multi-party human-human interaction that support several of the underlying assumptions of this formalization.