Paper Info
Title
Cooperative human robot interaction systems: IV. Communication of shared plans with Naïve humans using gaze and speech.
Abstract
Cooperation(1) is at the core of human social life. In this context, two major challenges face research on human-robot interaction: the first is to understand the underlying structure of cooperation, and the second is to build, based on this understanding, artificial agents that can successfully and safely interact with humans. Here we take a psychologically grounded and human-centered approach that addresses these two challenges. We test the hypothesis that optimal cooperation between a naive human and a robot requires that the robot can acquire and execute a joint plan, and that it communicates this joint plan through ecologically valid modalities including spoken language, gesture and gaze. We developed a cognitive system that comprises the human-like control of social actions, the ability to acquire and express shared plans and a spoken language stage. In order to test the psychological validity of our approach we tested 12 naive subjects in a cooperative task with the robot. We experimentally manipulated the presence of a joint plan (vs. a solo plan), the use of task-oriented gaze and gestures, and the use of language accompanying the unfolding plan. The quality of cooperation was analyzed in terms of proper turn taking, collisions and cognitive errors. Results showed that while successful turn taking could take place in the absence of the explicit use of a joint plan, its presence yielded significantly greater success. One advantage of the solo plan was that the robot would always be ready to generate actions, and could thus adapt if the human intervened at the wrong time, whereas in the joint plan the robot expected the human to take his/her turn. Interestingly, when the robot represented the action as involving a joint plan, gaze provided a highly potent nonverbal cue that facilitated successful collaboration and reduced errors in the absence of verbal communication. These results support the cooperative stance in human social cognition, and suggest that cooperative robots should employ joint plans, fully communicate them in order to sustain effective collaboration while being ready to adapt if the human makes a midstream mistake.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1109/IROS.2013.6696343
IROS
Keywords
DocType
ISSN
cognitive systems,gesture recognition,human-robot interaction,humanoid robots,speech processing,artificial agents,cognitive errors,cognitive system,cooperative human robot interaction systems,human social life,human-centered approach,human-like control,naïve humans,shared plan communication,social actions,spoken language,task-oriented gaze,task-oriented gestures,turn taking,HRI,cognitive architecture,cooperation,gaze,joint plan,shared intention,spoken language
Conference
2153-0858
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
13
0.62
11
Authors
12
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Stéphane Lallée1868.40
Katharina Hamann2352.24
Jasmin Steinwender3352.24
Felix Warneken4130.62
Uriel Martinez-Hernandez514018.23
Hector Barron-Gonzalez6343.55
Ugo Pattacini713312.87
Ilaria Gori821513.11
Maxime Petit9786.59
Giorgio Metta102515198.59
Paul F. M. J. Verschure1118829.61
Peter Ford Dominey12130.96