Who Is the Agent Talking To? Participant-Aware Role Switching for Embodied Student-Support Dialogue

Abstract

We present RPO-PDT, an embodied conversational agent that adapts its conversational role to the current participant. It acts as a Per- sonal Development Tutor (PDT) when supporting students and as a simulated student when faculty rehearse tutoring strategies. Voluntary closed-set participant verification informs a confidence- controlled role manager: stable enrolled-faculty matches activate the Student role, while enrolled students and unmatched partici- pants use the default PDT role and uncertain observations cause no transition. The system combines Furhat interaction, Rasa or- chestration, institutional retrieval, safeguarding, and LLM-based generation. User control is preserved through manual role override, consent-based facial enrolment, temporary interaction identifiers, and explicit retention or deletion of enrolled profiles. The demon- stration exposes both role-switching behaviour and these privacy controls in interaction.

arXiv comment3 pages, 2 figures