Using context and robot-human communication to resolve unexpected situational conflicts

While efforts to develop cognitive abilities for robots have made progress from the perspective of goal-directed task performance, research has shown that additional cognitive capabilities are needed to enable robots to interact, cooperate, and act as teammates with humans. In particular, robots need additional teamwork and coordination knowledge and an ability to apply this knowledge to a model of context that is at least homologous to the context models that people use in reasoning about environmental interactions. The Context-Augmented Robotic Interface Layer (CARIL) provides a robot with a cognitively-motivated computational capability for situation assessment and situational adaptation. CARIL is used to analyze and develop context-based reasoning strategies that allow a robot to coordinate its behavior and spatial movements with humans when they are working on shared tasks and/or in shared space. Both communication-free and communications approaches are addressed and tested in a simulated environment.

[1]  J. Searle,et al.  Speech act theory and pragmatics , 1980 .

[2]  Marc S. Lavine,et al.  The social life of robots , 2014 .

[3]  Mica R. Endsley,et al.  Toward a Theory of Situation Awareness in Dynamic Systems , 1995, Hum. Factors.

[4]  P. Agre.  Lucy A. Suchman, Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Commuinication (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987) , 1990, Artif. Intell..

[5]  Wayne Zachary,et al.  Toward Computational, Embeddable, Cognitive Models of Context , 2015 .

[6]  Marina Sbisà,et al.  Speech act theory , 2009 .

[7]  Florian Jentsch,et al.  Human-Robot Interactions in Future Military Operations , 2010 .

[8]  Wayne Zachary,et al.  A Context-based Approach to Robot-human Interaction☆ , 2015 .

[9]  Jenny A. Thomas.  Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics , 1995 .

[10]  Maarten Sierhuis,et al.  Coactive design , 2014, J. Hum. Robot Interact..

[11]  Lynn C. Miller,et al.  Context as a Cognitive Process: An Integrative Framework for Supporting Decision Making , 2013, STIDS.

[12]  Robert R. Hoffman,et al.  Beyond Simon's Slice: Five Fundamental Trade-Offs that Bound the Performance of Macrocognitive Work Systems , 2011, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[13]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Effects of anticipatory action on human-robot teamwork: Efficiency, fluency, and perception of team , 2007, 2007 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[14]  Richard W. Pew,et al.  Modeling human and organizational behavior : application to military simulations , 1998 .

[15]  Lucy Suchman.  Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication , 1987 .

[16]  Rene J. de Pontbriand,et al.  Modeling Human Behavior with Integrated Cognitive Architectures: Comparison, Evaluation, and Validation Edited by Kevin A. Gluck & Richard A. Pew 2005, 440 pages, $55.00 Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates ISBN 0-8058-5048-1 , 2007 .

[17]  O. G. Selfridge,et al.  Pandemonium: a paradigm for learning , 1988 .

[18]  Michael Lewis,et al.  Human control for cooperating robot teams , 2007, 2007 2nd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[19]  Alexei Makarenko,et al.  Measuring human-robot team effectiveness to determine an appropriate autonomy level , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[20]  M. Endsley.  The role of situation awareness in naturalistic decision making , 1997 .

[21]  Nancy J. Cooke,et al.  Measuring Team Knowledge: A Window to the Cognitive Underpinnings of Team Performance , 2003 .