title: Communication and knowledge sharing in human-robot interaction and learning from demonstration.
abstract: Inexpensive personal robots will soon become available to a large portion of the population. Currently, most consumer robots are relatively simple single-purpose machines or toys. In order to be cost effective and thus widely accepted, robots will need to be able to accomplish a wide range of tasks in diverse conditions. Learning these tasks from demonstrations offers a convenient mechanism to customize and train a robot by transferring task related knowledge from a user to a robot. This avoids the time-consuming and complex process of manual programming. The way in which the user interacts with a robot during a demonstration plays a vital role in terms of how effectively and accurately the user is able to provide a demonstration. Teaching through demonstrations is a social activity, one that requires bidirectional communication between a teacher and a student. The work described in this paper studies how the user's visual observation of the robot and the robot's auditory cues affect the user's ability to teach the robot in a social setting. Results show that auditory cues provide important knowledge about the robot's internal state, while visual observation of a robot can hinder an instructor due to incorrect mental models of the robot and distractions from the robot's movements.
authors.affiliation: Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, United States. nkoenig@usc.edu
authors.forename: Nathan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Koenig
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Takayama
authors.forename: Maja
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Matarić
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003142:Communication; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003463:Cues; D030141:Feedback, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012371:Robotics; D012931:Social Environment; D013663:Teaching; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult