[TMP-111] Social interactions with robots

Contact person: Frank Dignum (frank.dignum@umu.se)

Internal Partners:

1. Umeå University (UMU), Frank Dignum
2. Örebro University (ORU), Alessandro Safiotti

 

Robots are already in wide use in industrial settings where the interactions with people are well structured and stable. Interactions with robots in home settings are notoriously more difficult. The context of interactions changes over time, depending on the people present, the time of day, the event going on, etc. In order to cope with all these factors creating uncertainty and ambiguity people use practices, norms, conventions, etc. to normalize and package certain interactions into standard types of actions performed in order by the parties involved, e.g., getting coffee.Within this project we explored how the idea of social practices to regulate interactions and create expectations in the parties involved can be used to guide robots in their interactions with people. We explored a simple scenario with a Pepper robot to explore all practical obstacles when using these concepts in robotics.

Results Summary

There is a first prototype of the use of social practices in the interaction between a robot and humans. It is shown that following a social practice can help planning for the interaction. It can also be used to support recovery from deviations of the expected interaction by the human. There is a first representation of social practices in a data structure that is usable by the robot planner. A first version of a planner using the social practice information and an execution process that both executes the plan and monitors the progress of the interaction and adapts or re-plans the robots actions when necessary.

Tangible Outcomes

1. Video presentation summarizing the project