On human models for collaborative robots

Abstract

Human-robot collaboration requires to equip the robot with explicit reasoning on the human and on its own capacities to achieve its tasks in a collaborative way with a human partner. We present a robot control system which has been especially designed for a cognitive robot which shares space and task with a human. We have adopted a constructive approach based on effective individual and collaborative skills. The system is comprehensive since it aims at dealing with a complete set of abilities articulated so that the robot controller is effectively able to conduct a collaborative task with a human partner in a flexible manner. These abilities include geometric reasoning and situation assessment based essentially on perspective-taking and affordances, management and exploitation by the robot of each agent beliefs (human and robot) in a separate cognitive model, human-aware task planning and human and robot interleaved plan achievement.