Abstract:

This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among human interactors - the effects of tracking faces during an interaction. It also provides details for an architecture of a robot that can participate in conversational, collaborative interactions with engagement gestures. Finally the paper reports on findings of the effects on human participants who interacted with a robot when it either performed or did not perform engagement gestures. results of the human-robot studies indicate that people direct their attention to the robot more often in interactions where these gestures are present, and they find these gestures more appropriate than when they are not present.