Human-robot conversation with multiple participants in noisy public spaces

Divesh Lala; Yogeeswaran Muthukumaran; Vincent Fernandes; Kazushi Kato; Shota Fujiki; Zihao Chi; Masaya Iwasaki; Taiken Shintani; Megumi Kawata; Kazuki Sakai; Koji Inoue; Yuicihiro Yoshikawa; Tatsuya Kawahara

arXiv · 2609.00648

Human-robot conversation with multiple participants in noisy public spaces

Divesh Lala·Yogeeswaran Muthukumaran·Vincent Fernandes·Kazushi Kato·Shota Fujiki·Zihao Chi·Masaya Iwasaki·Taiken Shintani·Megumi Kawata·Kazuki Sakai·Koji Inoue·Yuicihiro Yoshikawa·Tatsuya Kawahara

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

For noisy real-world environments such as those in open public spaces, spoken dialogue systems for both autonomous robots and avatars should be carefully designed to provide enhanced speech signals. These signals can be used either for speech recognition or, in the case of an avatar system, transmitted as clean speech to a remote operator. This work proposes an audio system that can be used for both these scenarios and was demonstrated as a proof-of-concept at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka. The first scenario is an attentive listening system with the android ERICA, and the second is a conversation support system with mobile Teleco robots, with one of them acting as an avatar for a remote operator. Both systems feature multi-party conversation and use a single multi-channel microphone array. We describe how our audio system not only enhances the speech of multiple speakers in a noisy environment, but provides a form of spatial audio which allows for more immersiveness in avatar-based conversational interactions.

Explore related subjects

cs.RO cs.HC

Keep this discovery

BibTeX RIS

Divesh Lala, Yogeeswaran Muthukumaran, Vincent Fernandes, Kazushi Kato, Shota Fujiki, Zihao Chi, Masaya Iwasaki, Taiken Shintani, Megumi Kawata, Kazuki Sakai, Koji Inoue, Yuicihiro Yoshikawa, Tatsuya Kawahara. 2026-09-01. Human-robot conversation with multiple participants in noisy public spaces. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.00648

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

Discover connections

cs.HC subject cs.RO subject

Connections use source metadata and explicit phrase matches, not verified experimental comparisons.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Feelium: A Touchable Blimp Body for Aerial Telepresence

Floating things invite touch. We present Feelium, a blimp-based telepresence platform that enables visual embodiment and touch interaction through its inflatable skin. Through a VR headset, a remote person inhabits the blimp, looking out of it first-person, appearing on its skin as a face or avatar, and steering it through the room. Partners in the room pat it, press a palm against it, draw on it, or lean into it; the skin senses each contact, renders it into the wearer's view in VR spaces. Touch thus provides a physical interaction channel for remote presence, turning the skin into a shared surface between remote and co-located partners.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

CALM: Configuration-Aware Human Intervention Boundaries During Robot Approach

How robot body configuration shapes human intervention during approach remains underexplored. We conducted a within-participants study with 41 participants, measuring final stopping distance, subjective comfort, and exploratory eye-tracking responses across four humanoid arm configurations and two spatial scales. Full forward arm extension increased stopping distance by approximately 31-36 cm relative to arms-down. Spatial scale primarily affected comfort and pupil responses without a detectable stopping-distance shift. We introduce the Configuration-Aware Limit Model (CALM), which translates stopping-distance distributions into configuration-dependent population-coverage boundaries. Estimated boundaries at 80% coverage ranged from 0.88 to 1.47 m. In an illustrative one-dimensional planning analysis, reconfiguration enabled a 1.10 m approach goal that was unreachable with arms remaining fully extended under the same nominal pointwise 20% intervention-probability constraint. These findings support treating body configuration as a planning variable while distinguishing physical safety, behavioral intervention, and subjective cost.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2026

Can People Distinguish Human and AI Agency in Humanoid Teleoperation? A Preliminary Study of Agency Perception

Can people distinguish between human and AI agency in humanoid teleoperation? To explore this question, we developed \textit{Ghost-in-the-Loop}, a teleoperation framework that supports both human-operated and AI-generated control of a robot's voice, facial expressions, and gestures while maintaining a consistent embodiment. We conducted a preliminary online study ($N=50$) in which participants viewed short interaction clips generated by either a Human Operator or an AI Control and judged the perceived source of control. Results suggest that participants often struggled to distinguish between the two conditions in brief interactions. Qualitative responses indicate that judgments were primarily influenced by perceived naturalness, temporal coordination, and consistency across speech, facial expression, and gesture. These findings provide initial insights into agency perception in embodied human--AI communication and motivate future investigations of blended human--AI telepresence systems.

cs.HC↗