Enhancing Robot Assistive Behaviour with Reinforcement Learning and Theory of Mind

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Andriella, Antonio, Falcone, Giovanni, Rossi, Silvia
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Andriella, Antonio
Falcone, Giovanni
Rossi, Silvia
author_facet Andriella, Antonio
Falcone, Giovanni
Rossi, Silvia
contents The adaptation to users' preferences and the ability to infer and interpret humans' beliefs and intents, which is known as the Theory of Mind (ToM), are two crucial aspects for achieving effective human-robot collaboration. Despite its importance, very few studies have investigated the impact of adaptive robots with ToM abilities. In this work, we present an exploratory comparative study to investigate how social robots equipped with ToM abilities impact users' performance and perception. We design a two-layer architecture. The Q-learning agent on the first layer learns the robot's higher-level behaviour. On the second layer, a heuristic-based ToM infers the user's intended strategy and is responsible for implementing the robot's assistance, as well as providing the motivation behind its choice. We conducted a user study in a real-world setting, involving 56 participants who interacted with either an adaptive robot capable of ToM, or with a robot lacking such abilities. Our findings suggest that participants in the ToM condition performed better, accepted the robot's assistance more often, and perceived its ability to adapt, predict and recognise their intents to a higher degree. Our preliminary insights could inform future research and pave the way for designing more complex computation architectures for adaptive behaviour with ToM capabilities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_07003
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enhancing Robot Assistive Behaviour with Reinforcement Learning and Theory of Mind
Andriella, Antonio
Falcone, Giovanni
Rossi, Silvia
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
The adaptation to users' preferences and the ability to infer and interpret humans' beliefs and intents, which is known as the Theory of Mind (ToM), are two crucial aspects for achieving effective human-robot collaboration. Despite its importance, very few studies have investigated the impact of adaptive robots with ToM abilities. In this work, we present an exploratory comparative study to investigate how social robots equipped with ToM abilities impact users' performance and perception. We design a two-layer architecture. The Q-learning agent on the first layer learns the robot's higher-level behaviour. On the second layer, a heuristic-based ToM infers the user's intended strategy and is responsible for implementing the robot's assistance, as well as providing the motivation behind its choice. We conducted a user study in a real-world setting, involving 56 participants who interacted with either an adaptive robot capable of ToM, or with a robot lacking such abilities. Our findings suggest that participants in the ToM condition performed better, accepted the robot's assistance more often, and perceived its ability to adapt, predict and recognise their intents to a higher degree. Our preliminary insights could inform future research and pave the way for designing more complex computation architectures for adaptive behaviour with ToM capabilities.
title Enhancing Robot Assistive Behaviour with Reinforcement Learning and Theory of Mind
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.07003