User specification method and humanoid confirmation behavior

We investigate how users specify physical objects in human-humanoid interaction and discuss confirmation ways for humanoid robots. In the future such robots are expected to serve as daily life communication partners in similar ways as family members or friends. We conducted an experiment in which users asked a robot to retrieve books to investigate their methods of specifying location. Preliminary results show that half of a users specifying method for a book can only be understood with speech recognition. However, combining pointing and perfect speech recognition can identify almost all user demands. However, since humanoid robots need confirmation in actual situations due to imprecise pointing or noise problems, we considered the confirmation behaviors of robots. Experiment results suggest that confirmation that includes both speaking a books title and pointing provides a user more specification ways and reduces workload.