Timing in Human Robot Interaction

Timing plays a role in a range of human-robot interaction scenarios, as humans are highly sensitive to timing and interaction fluency. It is central to spoken dialogue, with turn-taking, interruptions, and hesitation affecting both efficiency and emotional response [1, 2]. Nonverbal behavior such as gestures, gaze, and other communicative cues is similarly sensitive to timing [3, 4]. Beyond communication, the temporal synchronization of functional actions is necessary for sharing resources and physical space, and also affects human perception of robotic teammates [5, 6]. Timing is thus crucial to the success of a broad spectrum of HRI applications, including but not limited to situated dialogue; collaborative manipulation; performance, musical, and entertainment robots; and expressive robot companions [7, 8].