As multiple robots are expected to coexist in future households, natural language is increasingly envisioned as a primary medium for human-robot and robot-robot communication. This paper introduces the concept of a Natural Language Environment (NLE), defined as an interaction space in which humans and multiple heterogeneous robots coordinate primarily through natural language. Rather than proposing a deployable system, this work aims to explore the design space of such environments. We first synthesize prior work on language-based human-robot interaction to derive a preliminary design space for NLEs. We then conduct a role-playing study in virtual reality to investigate how people conceptualize, negotiate, and coordinate human-multi-robot interactions within this imagined environment. Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis, we refine the preliminary design space and derive design implications that highlight key tensions and opportunities around task coordination dominance, robot autonomy, and robot personality in Natural Language Environments.

翻译：随着未来家庭中多机器人共存的预期日益增强，自然语言正逐渐被视为人机交互与机器人间通信的主要媒介。本文提出了自然语言环境的概念，其定义为一个交互空间，其中人类与多个异构机器人主要通过自然语言进行协调。本研究并非旨在提出一个可部署的系统，而是致力于探索此类环境的设计空间。我们首先综合了先前基于语言的人机交互研究，推导出自然语言环境的初步设计空间。随后，我们通过虚拟现实中的角色扮演研究，探究人们在此设想环境中如何概念化、协商并协调人-多机器人交互。基于定性与定量分析，我们完善了初步设计空间，并得出设计启示，这些启示凸显了自然语言环境中围绕任务协调主导权、机器人自主性及机器人个性等方面的核心矛盾与机遇。