Modelling Interaction Dynamics during Face-to-Face Interactions

During face to face interactions, the emotional state of each participant is greatly affected by the behavior of other participants and how much this behavior conforms with common protocols of interaction in the society. Research in human to human interaction in face to face situations has uncovered many forms of synchrony in the behavior of the interacting partners. This includes factors as body alignment, entrainment of verbal behavior. Maintenance of these kinds of synchrony is essential to keep the interaction natural and to regulate the affective state of the interacting partners. In this chapter we examine the interplay between one partner’s use of interaction protocols, maintenance of synchrony and the emotional response of the other partner in the two way interactions. We will first define the notion of interaction protocol and relate it with the Reactive Theory of Intention and Low Level Emotions. We will then show empirically that the use of suitable interaction protocols is essential to maintain a positive emotional response of the interaction partner during face to face explanation situations. The analysis in this section is based on the HR [1] interaction corpus containing sixty six humanhuman and human-robot interaction sessions. This interaction corpus utilizes physiological, behavioral and subjective data. Using this result, it is necessary to model not only the affective state of the interacting partners but also the interaction protocol that each of them is using. Human-Robot interaction experiments can be of value in analyzing the interaction protocols used by the partners and modelling their emotional response to these protocols. We used Human-Robot interactions in explanation and collaborative navigation tasks as a test-bed for our analysis of interaction protocol emergence and adaptation. The first experiment analyzes how the requirement to maintain the interaction protocol and synchrony restricts the design of the robot and how did we meet these restriction in a semi-autonomous miniature robot. We focus on how low level emotions can be used to act as a mediator between Perception and Behavior. The second experiment explores a computational model of the interaction protocol and evaluates it in an explanation face to face scenario. The chapter also provides a critical analysis of the interplay between interaction protocols and the emotional state of interaction partners.