Design of a Spoken Dialogue System to Provide Food Knowledge to Users while Eating

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a spoken dialogue system, which aims to recognize user eating behaviors during meals and promotes healthier eating habits by engaging users in an interactive co-dining experience. To provide an intuitive and more natural access, this information is integrated into a natural conversation with the user. Therefore, we conducted a preliminary study to explore how a human-like virtual avatar's eating speed affects the eating pace of a co-dining user. The results indicate that dining together with an avatar reduces the user's feeling of loneliness and enhances the overall satisfaction and enjoyment of the meal. Therefore, this work represents an important step toward realizing engaging co-dining experiences with human-like avatars and provides new insights into the future design of IoT systems to support solitary dining and health recommendations.