Behavioral overlays for non-verbal communication expression on a humanoid robot

This research details the application of non-verbal communication display behaviors to an autonomous humanoid robot, including the use of proxemics, which to date has been seldom explored in the field of human-robot interaction. In order to allow the robot to communicate information non-verbally while simultaneously fulfilling its existing instrumental behavior, a “behavioral overlay” model that encodes this data onto the robot's pre-existing motor expression is developed and presented. The state of the robot's system of internal emotions and motivational drives is used as the principal data source for non-verbal expression, but in order for the robot to display this information in a natural and nuanced fashion, an additional para-emotional framework has been developed to support the individuality of the robot's interpersonal relationships with humans and of the robot itself. An implementation on the Sony QRIO is described which overlays QRIO's existing EGO architecture and situated schema-based behaviors with a mechanism for communicating this framework through modalities that encompass posture, gesture and the management of interpersonal distance.

[1]  Richard Alan Peters,et al.  Robonaut task learning through teleoperation , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[2]  Henrik I. Christensen,et al.  Embodied social interaction for robots , 2005 .

[3]  Stefan Kopp,et al.  Model-based animation of co-verbal gesture , 2002, Proceedings of Computer Animation 2002 (CA 2002).

[4]  Clifford Nass,et al.  The media equation - how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places , 1996 .

[5]  D. Kiesler.  The 1982 Interpersonal Circle: A taxonomy for complementarity in human transactions. , 1983 .

[6]  D. Byrne,et al.  Similarity and awareness of similarity of personality characteristics as determinants of attraction. , 1969 .

[7]  Illah R. Nourbakhsh,et al.  A survey of socially interactive robots , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[8]  Donald R. Brown,et al.  Reciprocal Interaction and Similarity of Personality Attributes , 1984 .

[9]  E. Hall,et al.  The Hidden Dimension , 1970 .

[10]  Stefan Kopp,et al.  A Knowledge-based Approach for Lifelike Gesture Animation , 2000, ECAI.

[11]  Nobuyuki Yamasaki,et al.  Active interface for human-robot interaction , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  David Lee,et al.  The influence of subjects' personality traits on personal spatial zones in a human-robot interaction experiment , 2005, ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005..

[13]  Michael F. Cohen,et al.  Verbs and Adverbs: Multidimensional Motion Interpolation , 1998, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[14]  C. Breazeal.  Sociable Machines: Expressive Social Ex-change Between Humans and Robots , 2000 .

[15]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  Interactive Robots as Social Partners and Peer Tutors for Children: A Field Trial , 2004, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[16]  Robin R. Murphy,et al.  Affective expression in appearance constrained robots , 2006, HRI '06.

[17]  Masahiro Fujita,et al.  Autonomous behavior control architecture of entertainment humanoid robot SDR-4X , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[18]  M. Knapp,et al.  Nonverbal communication in human interaction , 1972 .

[19]  C. Nass,et al.  Does computer-synthesized speech manifest personality? Experimental tests of recognition, similarity-attraction, and consistency-attraction. , 2001 .

[20]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Toward sociable robots , 2003, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[21]  Geoffrey E. Hinton.  Mental simulation , 1990, Nature.

[22]  C. Nass,et al.  Does computer-synthesized speech manifest personality? Experimental tests of recognition, similarity-attraction, and consistency-attraction. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[23]  Andrea Lockerd Thomaz,et al.  Tutelage and Collaboration for Humanoid Robots , 2004, Int. J. Humanoid Robotics.

[24]  Pamela J. Hinds,et al.  Whose job is it anyway? a study of human-robot interaction in a collaborative task , 2004 .

[25]  Magda B. Arnold,et al.  The nature of emotion , 1968 .

[26]  Yasushi Nakauchi,et al.  A Social Robot that Stands in Line , 2002, Auton. Robots.

[27]  Maxim Likhachev,et al.  Robotic comfort zones , 2000, SPIE Optics East.

[28]  Chrystopher L. Nehaniv,et al.  A study of a single robot interacting with groups of children in a rotation game scenario , 2005, 2005 International Symposium on Computational Intelligence in Robotics and Automation.

[29]  J. Loomis,et al.  Interpersonal Distance in Immersive Virtual Environments , 2003, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[30]  Paolo Dario,et al.  On the development of the emotion expression humanoid robot WE-4RII with RCH-1 , 2004, 4th IEEE/RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2004..

[31]  R. Gordon.  Folk Psychology as Simulation , 1986 .

[32]  P. Jordan.  Designing Pleasurable Products: An Introduction to the New Human Factors , 2000 .

[33]  J. Cassell,et al.  Communicative humanoids: a computational model of psychosocial dialogue skills , 1996 .

[34]  P. Ekman,et al.  The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions. , 1994 .

[35]  Daniel Thalmann,et al.  Nonverbal communication interface for collaborative virtual environments , 1999, Virtual Reality.

[36]  David Lee,et al.  Close encounters: spatial distances between people and a robot of mechanistic appearance , 2005, 5th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2005..

[37]  S. Weitz.  Nonverbal Communication: Readings With Commentary , 1974 .

[38]  Matt Berlin,et al.  Untethered robotic play for repetitive physical tasks , 2005, ACE '05.

[39]  Masahiro Fujita,et al.  Learning behavior selection through interaction based on emotionally grounded symbol concept , 2004, 4th IEEE/RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2004..

[40]  C. Breazeal.  Towards Sociable Robots , 2002 .

[41]  P. Costa,et al.  Toward a new generation of personality theories: Theoretical contexts for the five-factor model. , 1996 .

[42]  Jane Heal,et al.  Understanding Other Minds from the Inside , 1998, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement.

[43]  Scott McGlashan,et al.  Olga - a conversational agent with gestures , 2007 .

[44]  Fumio Hara,et al.  Realistic facial expressions by SMA driven face robot , 2001, Proceedings 10th IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication. ROMAN 2001 (Cat. No.01TH8591).

[45]  Martin A. Giese,et al.  Morphable Models for the Analysis and Synthesis of Complex Motion Patterns , 2000, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[46]  Jim Orford,et al.  The Rules of Interpersonal Complementarity: Does Hostility Beget Hostility and Dominance, Submission?. , 1986 .

[47]  Hideki Shimomura,et al.  Real World Speech Interaction with a Humanoid Robot on a Layered Robot Behavior Control Architecture , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[48]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  Navigation for human-robot interaction tasks , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[49]  Henrik I. Christensen,et al.  Human-robot embodied interaction in hallway settings: a pilot user study , 2005, ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005..

[50]  A. J. Fridlund.  Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View , 1994 .

[51]  Justine Cassell,et al.  Fully Embodied Conversational Avatars: Making Communicative Behaviors Autonomous , 1999, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[52]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  The EMOTE model for effort and shape , 2000, SIGGRAPH.