Word Guessing Game with a Social Robotic Head

In this paper we address three limitations of our previous implementations in human-machine spoken interaction in Slovak: low prosodic variability, limited naturalness, and deployment in real acoustically challenging situations. We designed a word-guessing game in which subjects provide verbal cues for a target animal and social robotic head Furhat guesses the animal. We then deployed it in an open-air science festival with over 60 subjects playing the game. We describe the implementation and initial observations from the design, deployment, and user evaluation.