# What Can You Say to a Robot? Capability Communication Leads to More Natural Conversations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.01448 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01448/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Affective and Conversational Predictors of Re-Engagement in Human-Robot Interactions -- A Student-Centered Study with A Humanoid Social Robot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16449/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

When encountering a robot in the wild, it is not inherently clear to human users what the robot's capabilities are. When encountering misunderstandings or problems in spoken interaction, robots often just apologize and move on, without additional effort to make sure the user understands what happened. We set out to compare the effect of two speech based capability communication strategies (proactive, reactive) to a robot without such a strategy, in regard to the user's rating of and their behavior during the interaction. For this, we conducted an in-person user study with 120 participants who had three speech-based interactions with a social robot in a restaurant setting. Our results suggest that users preferred the robot communicating its capabilities proactively and adjusted their behavior in those interactions, using a more conversational interaction style while also enjoying the interaction more.