What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations

Merle M. Reimann; Koen V. Hindriks; Florian A. Kunneman; Catharine Oertel; Gabriel Skantze; Iolanda Leite

doi:10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974151

What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations

Merle M. Reimann, Koen V. Hindriks, Florian A. Kunneman, Catharine Oertel, Gabriel Skantze, Iolanda Leite

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

When encountering a robot in the wild, it is not inherently clear to human users what the robot's capabilities are. When encountering misunderstandings or problems in spoken interaction, robots often just apologize and move on, without additional effort to make sure the user understands what happened. We set out to compare the effect of two speech based capability communication strategies (proactive, reactive) to a robot without such a strategy, in regard to the user's rating of and their behavior during the interaction. For this, we conducted an in-person user study with 120 participants who had three speech-based interactions with a social robot in a restaurant setting. Our results suggest that users preferred the robot communicating its capabilities proactively and adjusted their behavior in those interactions, using a more conversational interaction style while also enjoying the interaction more.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	HRI 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Publisher	IEEE
Pages	708-716
Number of pages	9
ISBN (Electronic)	9798350378931
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974151
Publication status	Published - 30 Apr 2025
Event	20th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2025 - Melbourne, Australia Duration: 4 Mar 2025 → 6 Mar 2025

Publication series

Name	ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
ISSN (Electronic)	2167-2148

Conference

Conference	20th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2025
Country/Territory	Australia
City	Melbourne
Period	4/03/25 → 6/03/25

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 IEEE.

Keywords

dialogue management
Human-robot-interaction
spoken interaction
user study

Access to Document

10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974151

Cite this

Reimann, M. M., Hindriks, K. V., Kunneman, F. A., Oertel, C., Skantze, G., & Leite, I. (2025). What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations. In HRI 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 708-716). (ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974151

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title = "What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations",

abstract = "When encountering a robot in the wild, it is not inherently clear to human users what the robot's capabilities are. When encountering misunderstandings or problems in spoken interaction, robots often just apologize and move on, without additional effort to make sure the user understands what happened. We set out to compare the effect of two speech based capability communication strategies (proactive, reactive) to a robot without such a strategy, in regard to the user's rating of and their behavior during the interaction. For this, we conducted an in-person user study with 120 participants who had three speech-based interactions with a social robot in a restaurant setting. Our results suggest that users preferred the robot communicating its capabilities proactively and adjusted their behavior in those interactions, using a more conversational interaction style while also enjoying the interaction more.",

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language = "English",

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Reimann, MM, Hindriks, KV, Kunneman, FA, Oertel, C, Skantze, G & Leite, I 2025, What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations. in HRI 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, IEEE, pp. 708-716, 20th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2025, Melbourne, Australia, 4/03/25. https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974151

What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations. / Reimann, Merle M.; Hindriks, Koen V.; Kunneman, Florian A. et al.
HRI 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. IEEE, 2025. p. 708-716 (ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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AU - Skantze, Gabriel

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AB - When encountering a robot in the wild, it is not inherently clear to human users what the robot's capabilities are. When encountering misunderstandings or problems in spoken interaction, robots often just apologize and move on, without additional effort to make sure the user understands what happened. We set out to compare the effect of two speech based capability communication strategies (proactive, reactive) to a robot without such a strategy, in regard to the user's rating of and their behavior during the interaction. For this, we conducted an in-person user study with 120 participants who had three speech-based interactions with a social robot in a restaurant setting. Our results suggest that users preferred the robot communicating its capabilities proactively and adjusted their behavior in those interactions, using a more conversational interaction style while also enjoying the interaction more.

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Reimann MM, Hindriks KV, Kunneman FA, Oertel C, Skantze G, Leite I. What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations. In HRI 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. IEEE. 2025. p. 708-716. (ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction). doi: 10.1109/HRI61500.2025.10974151

What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations

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Bibliographical note

Keywords

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