Intonation in Robot Speech: Does it Work the Same as with People?

Ella Velner; Paul Boersma; Maartje de Graaf

doi:10.1145/3319502.3374801

Intonation in Robot Speech: Does it Work the Same as with People?

Ella Velner, Paul Boersma, Maartje de Graaf

Human Media Interaction

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

7 Citations (Scopus)

150 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Human-robot interaction (HRI) research aims to design natural interactions between humans and robots. Intonation, a social signaling function in human speech investigated thoroughly in linguistics, has not yet been studied in HRI. This study investigates the effect of robot speech intonation in four conditions (no intonation, focus intonation, end-of-utterance intonation, or combined intonation) on conversational naturalness, social engagement, and people's humanlike perception of the robot collecting objective and subjective data of participant conversations (n = 120). Our results showed that humanlike intonation partially improved subjective naturalness but not observed fluency, and that intonation partially improved social engagement but did not affect humanlike perceptions of the robot. Given that our results mainly differed from our hypotheses based on human speech intonation, we discuss the implications and provide suggestions for future research to further investigate conversational naturalness in robot speech intonation.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	HRI '20
Subtitle of host publication	Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
Place of Publication	New York, NY
Publisher	ACM Publishing
Pages	569-578
Number of pages	10
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4503-6746-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3319502.3374801
Publication status	Published - 9 Mar 2020
Event	15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2020 (Canceled) - Cambridge, United Kingdom Duration: 23 Mar 2020 → 26 Mar 2020 Conference number: 15 http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2020/

Conference

Conference	15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2020 (Canceled)
Abbreviated title	HRI 2020
Country/Territory	United Kingdom
City	Cambridge
Period	23/03/20 → 26/03/20
Internet address	http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2020/

Keywords

22/2 OA procedure

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10.1145/3319502.3374801

ArticleFinal published version, 1.65 MBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

@inproceedings{b686c18f35e045a6888176d8c15296ad,

title = "Intonation in Robot Speech: Does it Work the Same as with People?",

abstract = "Human-robot interaction (HRI) research aims to design natural interactions between humans and robots. Intonation, a social signaling function in human speech investigated thoroughly in linguistics, has not yet been studied in HRI. This study investigates the effect of robot speech intonation in four conditions (no intonation, focus intonation, end-of-utterance intonation, or combined intonation) on conversational naturalness, social engagement, and people's humanlike perception of the robot collecting objective and subjective data of participant conversations (n = 120). Our results showed that humanlike intonation partially improved subjective naturalness but not observed fluency, and that intonation partially improved social engagement but did not affect humanlike perceptions of the robot. Given that our results mainly differed from our hypotheses based on human speech intonation, we discuss the implications and provide suggestions for future research to further investigate conversational naturalness in robot speech intonation.",

keywords = "22/2 OA procedure",

author = "Ella Velner and Paul Boersma and {de Graaf}, Maartje",

year = "2020",

month = mar,

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doi = "10.1145/3319502.3374801",

language = "English",

pages = "569--578",

booktitle = "HRI '20",

publisher = "ACM Publishing",

note = "15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2020 (Canceled), HRI 2020 ; Conference date: 23-03-2020 Through 26-03-2020",

url = "http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2020/",

}

Velner, E, Boersma, P & de Graaf, M 2020, Intonation in Robot Speech: Does it Work the Same as with People? in HRI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. ACM Publishing, New York, NY, pp. 569-578, 15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2020 (Canceled), Cambridge, United Kingdom, 23/03/20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3319502.3374801

Intonation in Robot Speech: Does it Work the Same as with People? / Velner, Ella; Boersma, Paul; de Graaf, Maartje.
HRI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. New York, NY: ACM Publishing, 2020. p. 569-578.

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

TY - GEN

T1 - Intonation in Robot Speech

T2 - 15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 2020 (Canceled)

AU - Velner, Ella

AU - Boersma, Paul

AU - de Graaf, Maartje

N1 - Conference code: 15

PY - 2020/3/9

Y1 - 2020/3/9

N2 - Human-robot interaction (HRI) research aims to design natural interactions between humans and robots. Intonation, a social signaling function in human speech investigated thoroughly in linguistics, has not yet been studied in HRI. This study investigates the effect of robot speech intonation in four conditions (no intonation, focus intonation, end-of-utterance intonation, or combined intonation) on conversational naturalness, social engagement, and people's humanlike perception of the robot collecting objective and subjective data of participant conversations (n = 120). Our results showed that humanlike intonation partially improved subjective naturalness but not observed fluency, and that intonation partially improved social engagement but did not affect humanlike perceptions of the robot. Given that our results mainly differed from our hypotheses based on human speech intonation, we discuss the implications and provide suggestions for future research to further investigate conversational naturalness in robot speech intonation.

AB - Human-robot interaction (HRI) research aims to design natural interactions between humans and robots. Intonation, a social signaling function in human speech investigated thoroughly in linguistics, has not yet been studied in HRI. This study investigates the effect of robot speech intonation in four conditions (no intonation, focus intonation, end-of-utterance intonation, or combined intonation) on conversational naturalness, social engagement, and people's humanlike perception of the robot collecting objective and subjective data of participant conversations (n = 120). Our results showed that humanlike intonation partially improved subjective naturalness but not observed fluency, and that intonation partially improved social engagement but did not affect humanlike perceptions of the robot. Given that our results mainly differed from our hypotheses based on human speech intonation, we discuss the implications and provide suggestions for future research to further investigate conversational naturalness in robot speech intonation.

KW - 22/2 OA procedure

U2 - 10.1145/3319502.3374801

DO - 10.1145/3319502.3374801

M3 - Conference contribution

SP - 569

EP - 578

BT - HRI '20

PB - ACM Publishing

CY - New York, NY

Y2 - 23 March 2020 through 26 March 2020

ER -

Intonation in Robot Speech: Does it Work the Same as with People?

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