Attracting and controlling human attention through robot's behaviors suited to the situation

Abstract

A major challenge is to design a robot that can attract and control human attention in various social situations. If a robot would like to communicate a person, it may turn its gaze to him/her for eye contact. However, it is not an easy task for the robot to make eye contact because such a turning action alone may not be enough in all situations, especially when the robot and the human are not facing each other. In this paper, we present an attention control approach through robot's behaviors that can attract a person's attention by three actions: head turning, head shaking, and uttering reference terms corresponding to three viewing situations in which the human vision senses the robot (near peripheral field of view, far peripheral field of view, and out of field of view). After gaining attention, the robot makes eye contact through showing gaze awareness by blinking its eyes, and directs the human attention by eye and head turning behaviors to share an object.