We have a recently accepted paper at the upcoming ICMI conference, which will be held in Istanbul, Turkey this year.

Title: A Multimodal In-Car Dialogue System\\ That Tracks The Driver’s Attention

Authors: Spyros Kousidis, Casey Kennington, Timo Baumann, Hendrik Buschmeier, Stefan Kopp, David Schlangen

Abstract: When a driver speaks to a passenger, that passenger is co-located with the driver, is generally aware of the situation, and can stop speaking to allow the driver to focus on the driving task. In-car dialogue systems ignore this important fact, making them more distracting than even cell-phone conversations. We developed and tested a “situationally-aware” dialogue system that can interrupt its speech when a situation is detected which requires more attention of the driver, and can resume when normal driving conditions return. Furthermore, our system allows resumption of interrupted speech via verbal or visual cues (such as head nods) from the driver. We tested whether giving the driver such control is a hindrance or helps in a driving and memory task.