Turk-2, a multi-modal chess player

With the spreading of computers the demand for user-friendly interfaces has increased. The development of techniques based on multi-modal humancomputer intraction makes it possible to create systems which are more natural to use. We built Turk-2, a hybrid multi-modal chess-player with a robot arm and a screen-based talking head. Turk-2 can not only play chess, but can see and hear the opponent, can talk to him and display emotions. We were interested to find out if a simple embodiment with human-like communication capabilities enhances the experience of playing chess against a computer. First, we introduce the architecture of Turk-2, we describe the human experiments and its evaluation. The results justify that multi-modal interaction makes game playing more engaging, enjoyable and even more effective. These findings for a specific game situation provide yet another evidence of the power of human-like interaction in turning computer systems more attractive and easier to use.