Child Speech Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction Evaluations and Recommendations

• Published in: 2017 12th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI pp. 82 - 90
• Main Authors: Kennedy, James, Lemaignan, Séverin, Montassier, Caroline, Lavalade, Pauline, Irfan, Bahar, Papadopoulos, Fotios, Senft, Emmanuel, Belpaeme, Tony
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 06.03.2017
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Automatic Speech Recognition; Child-Robot Interaction; Computer systems organization > Embedded and cyber-physical systems > Robotics > Robotic autonomy; Computing methodologies > Artificial intelligence > Natural language processing; Computing methodologies > Artificial intelligence > Natural language processing > Speech recognition; Engines; Hidden Markov models; Human-centered computing > Interaction design; Human-robot interaction; Interaction Design Recommendations; Microphones; Noise measurement; Robots; Speech recognition; Verbal Interaction; child-robot interaction; verbal interaction; automatic speech recognition; interaction design recommendations
• ISBN: 9781450343367; 1450343368
• ISSN: 2167-2148
• DOI: 10.1145/2909824.3020229

An increasing number of human-robot interaction (HRI) studies are now taking place in applied settings with children. These interactions often hinge on verbal interaction to effectively achieve their goals. Great advances have been made in adult speech recognition and it is often assumed that these advances will carry over to the HRI domain and to interactions with children. In this paper, we evaluate a number of automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines under a variety of conditions, inspired by real-world social HRI conditions. Using the data collected we demonstrate that there is still much work to be done in ASR for child speech, with interactions relying solely on this modality still out of reach. However, we also make recommendations for child-robot interaction design in order to maximise the capability that does currently exist.