Explorations in engagement for humans and robots

This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among human interactors--the effect of tracking faces during an interaction. It also describes the architecture of a robot that can participate in conversational, collaborative interactions with engagement gestures. Finally, the paper reports on findings of experiments with human participants who interacted with a robot when it either performed or did not perform engagement gestures. Results of the human-robot studies indicate that people become engaged with robots: they direct their attention to the robot more often in interactions where engagement gestures are present, and they find interactions more appropriate when engagement gestures are present than when they are not.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, 3 table

Prédiction multi-modale à l'aide d'apprentissage PRObabiliste de Mouvement Primitives

International audienceThis paper proposes a method for multi-modal prediction of intention based on a probabilistic description of movement primitives and goals. We target dyadic interaction between a human and a robot in a collaborative scenario. The robot acquires multi-modal models of collaborative action primitives containing gaze cues from the human partner and kinetic information about the manipulation primitives of its arm. We show that if the partner guides the robot with the gaze cue, the robot recognizes the intended action primitive even in the case of ambiguous actions. Furthermore, this prior knowledge acquired by gaze greatly improves the prediction of the future intended trajectory during a physical interaction. Results with the humanoid iCub are presented and discussed.Dans ce papier, nous proposons une méthode de prédiction multi-modale de l'intention basé sur une description probabiliste de primitives de mouvements et de buts. On s'interesse ici à un scénario d'interaction collaborative entre un humain et un robot. Le robot modelise l'action collaborative de manière multi-modale, à l'aide de primitives contenant des informations visuelles (orientation du regard du partenaire) ainsi que des informations sur la dynamique de ses propre bras. Nous montrons dans cette étude que si le partenaire guide le robot en utilisant son regard, le robot reconnait l'action attendu par le partenaire et ce, même dans le cas où les mouvements sont ambigus. Nous montrons aussi qu'en guidant le début du mouvement du robot physiquement , le robot peut même afiner sa trajectoire pour respecter encore mieux la volonté de son partenaire. Finalement, en utilisant les deux modalités, le robot peut utiliser l'information visuelle comme un a-priori sur l'action a effectuer, ce qui permet d'améliorer la reconnaissance de la trajectoire attendue lors d'interaction physique

Humanoid robots for contract visualisation

This paper challenges two assumptions made by most lawyers: first, that contracts should consist of words alone; second, that only human beings are capable of designing the “look and feel” of contracts. These assumptions amount to taboos – even in today’s digital world. Humanoid robots for contract visualisation would or rather will break these taboos. Contract visualisation constitutes a fledgling subject concerning various fields of law (e.g. visual law, legal design, contract law, legal theory and EU law). This topic needs to be explored from different perspectives. Although humanoid robots are being increasingly implemented in the legal context, their potential for contract visualisation has not yet been investigated. This paper therefore discusses contract visualisation and how humanoid robots might use visuals of the Contract Design Pattern Library presented by the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM). The findings prompt discussion about whether and, if so, how to communicate legally with those anthropomorphic machines. Or even more specifically, about whether and, if so, how humanoid robots might best represent contracts visually and communicate these both to humans and to other humanoid robots

Semantische Objektmodellierung mittels multimodaler Interaktion

Ein Konzept für eine interaktive semantische Objektmodellierung wird vorgeschlagen. Die flexible und erweiterbare Objektrepräsentation ermöglicht die Modellierung funktionaler und semantischer Objektinformationen durch die Darstellung von Eigenschaften, die menschliche Begriffe und Kategorien abbilden und die Verbindung von Objekten mit Handlungen und mit sensoriell erfassbaren Attributen herstellen. Das interaktive Modellierungssystem erlaubt die intuitive Erstellung semantischer Objektmodelle