Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Sciences

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Efecan Yılmaz will defend his thesis.

Title: DEICTIC GAZE IN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

Date: 28nd August 2018

Time: 11:30 AM

Place: A-108

Thesis Abstract : The research in human-robot interaction (HRI) involve topics, such as interlocutor collaboration in joint action, deixis in HRI, or the properties of shared environments. Moreover, referring expressions are particularly studied in joint action from both expression generation and resolution perspectives. Selective visual attention in gaze interaction and saliency patterns are also active topics in HRI. The present thesis investigated in a virtual reality (VR) environment an HRI and joint action situation with the assistance of eye tracking in a head-mounted display device in order to explore the augmentation of non-verbal communication in HRI. For this purpose, we employed a multimodal approach in communication with both non-verbal deictic expressions and verbal references in a multi-robot agent, single human experiment setting. We also utilized two distinct robot agent designs to explore an interaction effect in robot agents’ design as we evaluated participants’ deixis resolution time and accuracy, as well as their gaze interaction patterns.