Affordance-based Human-Robot Interaction
Reinhard Moratz, Thora Tenbrink

Abstract.
In our targeted scenario, humans can flexibly establish joint object reference
with a robot entirely on the basis of their own intuitions. To reach this aim,
the robot needs to be equipped with the kind of knowledge that can be matched
in a cognitively adequate way to users’ intuitive conceptual and linguistic preferences.
Such an endeavour requires knowledge about human spatial object reference
under consideration of object affordances and functional features. In this
paper we motivate our approach by reviewing relevant insights gained in the field
of Spatial Cognition, and we discuss the suitability of our robotic system to incorporate
these findings. In our context, affordances are visually perceivable functional
object aspects shared by the designer of the recognition module and the
prospective robot user or instructor.