Experiments on human-robot communication with Robota, an imitative learning and communicating doll robot

Abstract

Imitation 1 and communication behaviours are important means of interaction between humans and robots. In experiments on robot teaching by demonstration, imitation and communication behaviours can be used by the demonstrator to drive the robot's attention to the demonstrated task. In a children game, they play an important role to engage the interaction between the child and the robot and to stimulate the child's interest. In this work, we study how imitation skills can be used for teaching a robot a symbolic communication system to describe its actions and perceptions. We report on experiments in which we study human-robot interactions using a doll robot. Robota is a robot, whose shape is similar to that of a doll, and which has the capacity to learn, imitate and communicate. Through simple phototaxis behaviour, the robot can imitate (mirror) the arms and head's movements of a demonstrator. The robot is controlled by a Dynamical Recurrent Associative memory Architecture (DRAMA), wh...