Multimodal Processing of Discourse Information; The Effect of Synchrony

This paper describes progress in the design of unobtrusive technology for the tracking of participant status and engagement in spoken conversations. The apparatus and algorithms have applications in human-computer interface design and will enable a better level of communication between an information providing system, or robot, and a human user by mimicking the nonverbal processes that are an essential part of human-human face-to-face spoken interactions.