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：随着多机器人系统有望在未来家庭中共存，自然语言日益被视为人机交互与机器人间通信的主要媒介。本文提出自然语言环境的概念，其定义为人类与多个异构机器人主要通过自然语言进行协调的交互空间。本研究并非旨在构建可部署的系统，而是试图探索此类环境的设计空间。我们首先综合现有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。随后通过虚拟现实中的角色扮演实验，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，并提炼出设计启示，这些启示揭示了自然语言环境中任务协调主导权、机器人自主性与机器人个性之间的核心矛盾与潜在机遇。