We introduce a computational framework, based on work from psycholinguistics, which is aimed at achieving proper turn-entry timing for situated agents. We demonstrate that: 1) the system is superior to a non-incremental system in terms of faster responses, reduced gap between turns, and the ability to perform actions early, 2) the system can time its turn to come in immediately at a turn transition, or earlier to produce several types of overlap, and 3) the system is robust to various forms of disfluency in the input. Overall, this domain-independent framework can be integrated into existing dialogue systems to improve responsiveness, and is another step toward more natural and fluid turn-taking behavior.
@inproceedings{Gervits2020Sigdial,
title={It's About Time: Turn-Entry Timing for Situated Human-Robot Dialogue},
author={Felix Gervits and Ravenna Thielstrom and Antonio Roque and Matthias Scheutz},
year={2020},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue},
url={https://hrilab.tufts.edu/publications/Gervits2020Sigdial.pdf}
}