Attention Mechanisms for Social Engagements of Robots with Multiple People

Abstract

Social robots need to have special human-robot interaction (HRI) systems to be accepted by people as natural partners. This paper first describes a multiple agent-based architecture designed to support HRI and then introduces an engagement mechanism based on attention distraction. The monitoring agent is a high-level agent that monitors and evaluates the surrounding environment and people. The interaction agent is another high-level agent that facilitates the seamless interaction between the robot and humans. The capability agent is a compound agent within the robot that is responsible for the robot's abilities and actions. The use of multiple HRI modalities in the engagement mechanism provides means for people to solicit the robot's attention while allowing the robot to ignore the distraction if it has recently become engaged with something else. The system has been successfully implemented and tested on a Pioneer 3-AT mobile robot