# A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4994 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1401.4994/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2014.

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

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- [Natural Language Processing for Smart Healthcare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15803/) (2021)
- [MIRROR: Differentiable Deep Social Projection for Assistive Human-Robot Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02877/) (2022)
- [Has It All Been Solved? Open NLP Research Questions Not Solved by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.12544/) (2023)
- [SCOUT: A Situated and Multi-Modal Human-Robot Dialogue Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12844/) (2024)
- [Decision-Theoretic Question Generation for Situated Reference Resolution: An Empirical Study and Computational Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06288/) (2021)
- [Detecting Interlocutor Confusion in Situated Human-Avatar Dialogue: A Pilot Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02436/) (2022)
- [Human-Robot Dialogue Annotation for Multi-Modal Common Ground](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.12829/) (2024)
- [Knowledge Triggering, Extraction and Storage via Human-Robot Verbal Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.11170/) (2021)
- [Transferring Studies Across Embodiments: A Case Study in Confusion Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01493/) (2022)
- [Algorithmic Prompt Generation for Diverse Human-like Teaming and Communication with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03991/) (2025)
- [Efficient Listener: Dyadic Facial Motion Synthesis via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.20685/) (2025)
- [Hierarchical Policies from Verbal and Egocentric Human Signals for Natural Human-Robot Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10276/) (2026)
- [Bridging the Communication Gap: Artificial Agents Learning Sign Language through Imitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10043/) (2024)
- [Robot Tasks with Fuzzy Time Requirements from Natural Language Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09436/) (2024)
- [VGGT-HPE: Reframing Head Pose Estimation as Relative Pose Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10106/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion.