Speech, Gesture, and Space: Investigating Explicit and Implicit Communication in Multi-Human Multi-Robot Collaborations

Abstract

Effective communication is often required for agents to properly handle collaborative multi-agent tasks. This is particularly true when humans are working alongside synthetic agents and traditional wireless communication modes are impractical. A framework for communication must allow for both explicit communication, where actions are directly execute to convey information, and implicit communication, where the agent projects information indirectly as a consequence of actions taken to achieve the tasks. We propose a Theory of Mind-based approach to communication that allows an agent to reason about its own state, the states of the other agents, and the other agents’ beliefs about each other’s state.