Cognitive
Modelling of Spatial Reference
for Human-Robot Interaction
Reinhard Moratz, Kerstin Fischer, & Thora Tenbrink
The question addressed in this paper is which types of spatial reference
human users employ in the interaction with a robot and how a cognitively
adequate model of these strategies can be implemented. In experiments in
human-robot interaction we explored how users approach an artificial communication
partner, which was designed to mimic spatial reference among humans. Our
findings show that spatial reference in human-robot interaction differs from
natural situations in human-human interaction in several respects. For instance,
many users unexpectedly employed fine-grained, path-based, instructions rather
than specifying the intended goal object of the action directly. If instructions
were not successful, participants created less and less complex descriptions.
Those users who did specify the goal were found to employ those kinds of
spatial reference strategies implemented in our computational model. In particular,
they exploited the presence of several similar objects by perceiving and
referring to them linguistically as a group.