Anticipation in Human-Robot Interaction.

Abstract

Anticipating the actions of others is key to coordinat-ing joint activities. We propose the notion of anticipa-tory action and perception for for robots acting with hu-mans. We describe four systems in which anticipation has been modeled for human-robot interaction; two in a teamwork setting, and two in a human-robot joint per-formance setting. In evaluating the effects of anticipa-tory agent activity, we find in one study that anticipation aids in team efficiency, as well as in the perceived com-mitment of the robot to the team and its contribution to the team’s fluency and success. In another study we see anticipatory action and perception affect the human partner’s sense of team fluency, the team’s improvement over time, the robots contribution to the efficiency and fluency, the robot’s intelligence, and the robots adapta-tion to the task. We also find that subjects working with the anticipatory robot attribute more human qualities to the robot, such as gender and intelligence.