A Social Robot Companion for Individuals Eating Alone

In this paper, we present the first implementation of a social robot acting as a companion for individuals eating alone. Our system can engage in multimodal interactions with the user during meals. It conducts conversations on various topics, complemented by gestures and other nonverbal behaviors. The system comprises a NAO robot, human activity recognition modules, a speech recognition module, and a dialog management system integrated with an LLM model. In the paper, we present a technical description of the system and the interaction flow, as well as discuss the possible applications and planned validation.