Estimate the intimacy of the characters based on their emotional states for application to non-task dialogue

Recently, a portable digital device equipped with voice guidance has been widely used with increasing the demand for the usability-conscious dialogue system. One of the problems with the existing dialogue system is its immature application to non-task dialogue. Non-task-oriented dialogue requires some schemes that enable smooth and flexible conversations with a user. For example, it would be possible to go beyond the closed relationship between the system and the user by considering the user´s relationship with others in real life. In this paper, we focused on the dialogue made by the two characters in a drama scenario, and tried to express their relationship with a scale of “intimacy degree.” There will be such various elements related to the intimacy degree as the frequency of response to the utterance and the attitude of a speaker during the dialogue. We focused on the emotional state of the speaker during the utterance and tried to realize intimacy estimation with higher accuracy. As the evaluation result, we achieved higher accuracy in intimacy estimation than the existing method based on speech role.