Who's next? Integrating Non-Verbal Turn-Taking Cues for Embodied Conversational Agents
Channel: RWTHVirtualReality
Date: 2023-07-18

Taking turns in a conversation is a delicate interplay of various signals, which we as humans can easily decipher. Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) communicating with humans should leverage this ability for smooth and enjoyable conversations. To this end, we strive to design a comprehensive system that produces cues for all non-verbal modalities: gestures, gaze, and breathing. The system provides valuable cues without requiring speech content adaptation. In a user study with n= 32 participants, we examined the system’s usability and the perceived social presence of the ECAs’ turn-taking behavior, both with respect to each individual non-verbal modality and their interplay. While we found effects of gesture manipulation in interactions with the ECAs, no effects on social presence were found

The work was presented at the 23rd ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents 2021 (IVA'23).

More information can be found here: https://vr.rwth-aachen.de/publication/02236/
Find out more about us: http://vr.rwth-aachen.de/