Multimodal saliency-based attention: A lazy robot's approach

Abstract

We extend our work on an integrated object-based system for saliency-driven overt attention and knowledge-driven object analysis. We present how we can reduce the amount of necessary head movement during scene analysis while still focusing all salient proto-objects in an order that strongly favors proto-objects with a higher saliency. Furthermore, we integrated motion saliency and as a consequence adaptive predictive gaze control to allow for efficient gazing behavior on the ARMAR-III robot head. To evaluate our approach, we first collected a new data set that incorporates two robotic platforms, three scenarios, and different scene complexities. Second, we introduce measures for the effectiveness of active overt attention mechanisms in terms of saliency cumulation and required head motion. This way, we are able to objectively demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multicriterial focus of attention selection.