A Socially Interactive Robot Partner Using Content-Based Conversation System for Information Support

Abstract

The development of robot partners for supporting human life has been growing for many years. One main feature that should be considered in developing such robots is the conversation system. In this study, a conversation system called iPhonoid-C is introduced. The iPhonoid-C is a robot partner based on a smart device. A conversation is a form of communication in which two or more people exchange words and information. Therefore, one important part of judging the effectiveness of the interaction must be to evaluate if the appropriate amount of information is provided by the robot. In this research, we focused on a time-dependent utterance system to adjust the amount of conversation based on Grice’s maxim of quantity. By utilizing Grice’s theory, it is possible to tailor the robot’s communication by selecting the Grice value to correspond to the human’s condition. Using this method, the robot partner can control the amount of information it communicates to adapt to the human’s situation based on Grice’s maxim of quantity. An experimental result with the robot partner is presented to validate the proposed time-dependent conversation system.