The collaborative mind: intention reading and trust in human-robot interaction

Samuele Vinanzi,Angelo Cangelosi,Christian Goerick

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102130

Samuele Vinanzi, Angelo Cangelosi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102130

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Journal: iScience	Publication Date: Feb 1, 2021
Citations: 14	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: University of Manchester, Honda (Germany)

Abstract

SummaryRobots are likely to become important social actors in our future and so require more human-like ways of assisting us. We state that collaboration between humans and robots is fostered by two cognitive skills: intention reading and trust. An agent possessing these abilities would be able to infer the non-verbal intentions of others and to evaluate how likely they are to achieve their goals, jointly understanding what kind and which degree of collaboration they require. For this reason, we propose a developmental artificial cognitive architecture that integrates unsupervised machine learning and probabilistic models to imbue a humanoid robot with intention reading and trusting capabilities. Our experimental results show that the synergistic implementation of these cognitive skills enable the robot to cooperate in a meaningful way, with the intention reading model allowing a correct goal prediction and with the trust component enhancing the likelihood of a positive outcome for the task.

Highlights

Human beings are social creatures held together by communal bonds and organized into complex social structures
We propose a developmental artificial cognitive architecture that integrates unsupervised machine learning and probabilistic models to imbue a humanoid robot with intention reading and trusting capabilities
Our experimental results show that the synergistic implementation of these cognitive skills enable the robot to cooperate in a meaningful way, with the intention reading model allowing a correct goal prediction and with the trust component enhancing the likelihood of a positive outcome for the task

Summary

Introduction

Human beings are social creatures held together by communal bonds and organized into complex social structures This tendency to aggregation and to work as part of groups is not to be dismissed as a quirk but rather constitutes an important characteristic that has been proved being at least partially hardwired in our genes (Ebstein et al, 2010). ‘‘collaboration’’ refers to the act of dividing the task among the participants, who engage in a mutual, coordinated effort to solve the problem together. Given these definitions, the main difference between cooperation and collaboration is that the latter implies a deeper level of interaction, shared understanding, and coordination (Dillenbourg, 1999)

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