Facilitating Mental Modeling in Collaborative Human-Robot Interaction through Adverbial Cues

Gordon Briggs and Matthias Scheutz
Tufts University


Abstract

Mental modeling is crucial for natural human-robot interactions (HRI). Yet, effective mechanisms that enable reasoning about and communication of mental states are not available. We propose to utilize adverbial cues, routinely employed by humans, for this goal and present a novel algorithm that integrates adverbial modifiers with belief revision and expression, phrasing utterances based on Gricean conversational maxims. The algorithm is demonstrated in a simple HRI scenario.