Three-layered draw-attention model for humanoid robots with gestures and verbal cues

When we talk about objects in an environment, we indicate to a listener which object is currently under consideration by using pointing gesture and such reference terms as "this" and "that". Such reference terms play an important role in human interaction by quickly informing the listener of an indicated object's location. In this research, we propose a three-layered draw-attention model for humanoid robots with gestures and verbal cues. Our proposed three-layered model consists of three sub models: Reference Term Model (RTM), Limit Distance Model (LDM) and Object Property Model (OPM). RTM decides an appropriate reference term using functions constructed by an analysis of human behavior. LDM decides whether to use the object's property with a reference term. OPM decides the appropriate property for indicating the object by comparing object properties with each other. We developed an attention drawing system in a communication robot named "Robovie" based on the three layered model. We confirmed its effectiveness through the experiments.