Emergent dynamics of turn-taking interaction in drumming games with a humanoid robot

We present results from an empirical study investigating emergent turn-taking in a drumming experience involving Kaspar, a humanoid child-sized robot, and adult participants. In this work, our aim is to have turn-taking and role switching which is not deterministic but emerging from the social interaction between the human and the humanoid. Therefore the robot is not just dasiafollowingpsila and imitating the human, but could be the leader in the game and being imitated by the human. Data from the first implementation of a human-robot interaction experiment are presented and analysed qualitatively (in terms of participantspsila subjective experiences) and quantitatively (concerning the drumming performance of the human-robot pair). Results are analysed statistically and show significant differences for the three games (with different probabilistic models) where the models enabling more interaction and more ldquonaturalrdquo turn-taking were preferred by the human participants.