FreeTalky: Don't Be Afraid! Conversations Made Easier by a Humanoid Robot using Persona-based Dialogue
This addresses xenoglossophobia for language learners by providing a robot-based conversational partner, though it is incremental as it builds on existing deep learning and robotics methods.
The authors tackled foreign language anxiety by developing FreeTalky, a platform using a humanoid robot with persona-based dialogue and grammar error correction, and found through human evaluation that it helps alleviate xenoglossophobia by replacing human conversation partners.
We propose a deep learning-based foreign language learning platform, named FreeTalky, for people who experience anxiety dealing with foreign languages, by employing a humanoid robot NAO and various deep learning models. A persona-based dialogue system that is embedded in NAO provides an interesting and consistent multi-turn dialogue for users. Also, an grammar error correction system promotes improvement in grammar skills of the users. Thus, our system enables personalized learning based on persona dialogue and facilitates grammar learning of a user using grammar error feedback. Furthermore, we verified whether FreeTalky provides practical help in alleviating xenoglossophobia by replacing the real human in the conversation with a NAO robot, through human evaluation.