Whose Is This?: Context-Aware Object Ownership Inference with Uncertainty-Guided Questioning

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hashimoto, Saki, Taniguchi, Akira, Hasegawa, Shoichi, Hagiwara, Yoshinobu, Taniguchi, Tadahiro
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Hashimoto, Saki
Taniguchi, Akira
Hasegawa, Shoichi
Hagiwara, Yoshinobu
Taniguchi, Tadahiro
author_facet Hashimoto, Saki
Taniguchi, Akira
Hasegawa, Shoichi
Hagiwara, Yoshinobu
Taniguchi, Tadahiro
contents Service robots must infer object ownership to correctly interpret instructions such as "bring me my cup." However, ownership is a latent attribute that cannot be directly observed, and existing methods often rely on limited cues such as recent usage, making them unreliable in scenarios such as temporary sharing. We propose a framework for context-aware ownership inference with uncertainty-guided interaction (COIN). The method integrates user background information and object usage history using a large language model (LLM) to estimate ownership scores. To handle uncertainty, we apply conformal prediction to construct a set of plausible owners and selectively generate user queries when the prediction is uncertain. Experiments in a simulated home environment show that the proposed method consistently outperforms baseline approaches, achieving a Subset Accuracy of 0.988 and a Mean Jaccard index of 0.991. The method also maintains high performance in scenarios involving temporary use and shared ownership. The results demonstrate that combining contextual reasoning with uncertainty-aware interaction improves both estimation accuracy and robustness. The project page is available at https://emergentsystemlabstudent.github.io/COIN/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_28087
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Whose Is This?: Context-Aware Object Ownership Inference with Uncertainty-Guided Questioning
Hashimoto, Saki
Taniguchi, Akira
Hasegawa, Shoichi
Hagiwara, Yoshinobu
Taniguchi, Tadahiro
Robotics
Service robots must infer object ownership to correctly interpret instructions such as "bring me my cup." However, ownership is a latent attribute that cannot be directly observed, and existing methods often rely on limited cues such as recent usage, making them unreliable in scenarios such as temporary sharing. We propose a framework for context-aware ownership inference with uncertainty-guided interaction (COIN). The method integrates user background information and object usage history using a large language model (LLM) to estimate ownership scores. To handle uncertainty, we apply conformal prediction to construct a set of plausible owners and selectively generate user queries when the prediction is uncertain. Experiments in a simulated home environment show that the proposed method consistently outperforms baseline approaches, achieving a Subset Accuracy of 0.988 and a Mean Jaccard index of 0.991. The method also maintains high performance in scenarios involving temporary use and shared ownership. The results demonstrate that combining contextual reasoning with uncertainty-aware interaction improves both estimation accuracy and robustness. The project page is available at https://emergentsystemlabstudent.github.io/COIN/.
title Whose Is This?: Context-Aware Object Ownership Inference with Uncertainty-Guided Questioning
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.28087