Robots can be perceived as goal-oriented agents

Alessandra Sciutti | Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Ambra Bisio | Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Francesco Nori | Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Giorgio Metta | Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Luciano Fadiga | Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Giulio Sandini | Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Understanding the goals of others is fundamental for any kind of interpersonal interaction and collaboration. From a neurocognitive perspective, intention understanding has been proposed to depend on an involvement of the observer’s motor system in the prediction of the observed actions (Nyström et al. 2011; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia 2010; Southgate et al. 2009). An open question is if a similar understanding of the goal mediated by motor resonance can occur not only between humans, but also for humanoid robots. In this study we investigated whether goal-oriented robotic actions can induce motor resonance by measuring the appearance of anticipatory gaze shifts to the goal during action observation. Our results indicate a similar implicit processing of humans’ and robots’ actions and propose to use anticipatory gaze behaviour as a tool for the evaluation of human-robot interactions. Keywords: Humanoid robot; motor resonance; anticipation; proactive gaze; action understanding

Published online: 10 June 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.14.3.02sci

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