The Need for Contact and Perception Feedback to Support Natural Interactivity in Human-Robot Communication

The purpose of this paper is to motivate the need for modelling Contact and Perception feedback in Natural language user interfaces for Human-Robot Interaction. In a scenario where the user and the robot are co-present contact and perception feedback will increase the situational awareness of the user. One component of a such a model could be a kind of low-level user model aiming to decide the perceptual status of the user. Miscommunication in scenarios that is related to insufficient or ill-formed Contact and Perception feedback has been analysed. To pinpoint the source of feedback problems we provide an initial account for the type of information sources that a low-level user model of Contact and Perception should comprise. We also discuss design implications and present a design case for a multimodal user interfaces that motivates this explorative effort.