Pointing to space: Modeling of deictic interaction referring to regions

Abstract

In daily conversation, we sometimes observe a deictic interaction scene that refers to a region in a space, such as saying ¿please put it over there¿ with pointing. How can such an interaction be possible with a robot? Is it enough to simulate people's behaviors, such as utterance and pointing? Instead, we highlight the importance of simulating human cognition. In the first part of our study, we empirically demonstrate the importance of simulating human cognition of regions when a robot engages in a deictic interaction by referring to a region in a space. The experiments indicate that a robot with simulated cognition of regions improves efficiency of its deictic interaction. In the second part, we present a method for a robot to computationally simulate cognition of regions.