Task planning for human-robot interaction

Abstract

Human-robot interaction requires explicit reasoning on the human environment and on the robot capacities to achieve its tasks in a collaborative way with a human partner.This paper focuses on organization of the robot decisional abilities and more particularly on the management of human interaction as an integral part of the robot control architecture. Such an architecture should be the framework that will allow the robot to accomplish its tasks but also produce behaviors that support its engagement vis-a-vis its human partner and interpret similar behaviors from him.Together and in coherence with this framework, we intend to develop and experiment various task planners and interaction schemes, that will allow the robot to select and perform its tasks while taking into account explicitly the constraints imposed by the presence of humans, their needs and preferences.We have considered a scheme where the robot plans for itself and for the human in order not only (1) to assess the feasibility of the task (at a certain level) before performing it, but also (2) to share the load between the robot and the human and (3) to explain/illustrate a possible course of action.