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Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction

Social robotics is an emerging field that is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. In fact, it is increasingly more frequent to have robots that operate in close proximity with humans or even collaborate with them in joint tasks. In this context, the investigation of how to endow a humanoid r...

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Autores principales: Lombardi, Maria, Maiettini, Elisa, De Tommaso, Davide, Wykowska, Agnieszka, Natale, Lorenzo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8935014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35321344
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.770165
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author Lombardi, Maria
Maiettini, Elisa
De Tommaso, Davide
Wykowska, Agnieszka
Natale, Lorenzo
author_facet Lombardi, Maria
Maiettini, Elisa
De Tommaso, Davide
Wykowska, Agnieszka
Natale, Lorenzo
author_sort Lombardi, Maria
collection PubMed
description Social robotics is an emerging field that is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. In fact, it is increasingly more frequent to have robots that operate in close proximity with humans or even collaborate with them in joint tasks. In this context, the investigation of how to endow a humanoid robot with social behavioral skills typical of human–human interactions is still an open problem. Among the countless social cues needed to establish a natural social attunement, this article reports our research toward the implementation of a mechanism for estimating the gaze direction, focusing in particular on mutual gaze as a fundamental social cue in face-to-face interactions. We propose a learning-based framework to automatically detect eye contact events in online interactions with human partners. The proposed solution achieved high performance both in silico and in experimental scenarios. Our work is expected to be the first step toward an attentive architecture able to endorse scenarios in which the robots are perceived as social partners.
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spelling pubmed-89350142022-03-22 Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction Lombardi, Maria Maiettini, Elisa De Tommaso, Davide Wykowska, Agnieszka Natale, Lorenzo Front Robot AI Robotics and AI Social robotics is an emerging field that is expected to grow rapidly in the near future. In fact, it is increasingly more frequent to have robots that operate in close proximity with humans or even collaborate with them in joint tasks. In this context, the investigation of how to endow a humanoid robot with social behavioral skills typical of human–human interactions is still an open problem. Among the countless social cues needed to establish a natural social attunement, this article reports our research toward the implementation of a mechanism for estimating the gaze direction, focusing in particular on mutual gaze as a fundamental social cue in face-to-face interactions. We propose a learning-based framework to automatically detect eye contact events in online interactions with human partners. The proposed solution achieved high performance both in silico and in experimental scenarios. Our work is expected to be the first step toward an attentive architecture able to endorse scenarios in which the robots are perceived as social partners. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8935014/ /pubmed/35321344 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.770165 Text en Copyright © 2022 Lombardi, Maiettini, De Tommaso, Wykowska and Natale. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Robotics and AI
Lombardi, Maria
Maiettini, Elisa
De Tommaso, Davide
Wykowska, Agnieszka
Natale, Lorenzo
Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction
title Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction
title_full Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction
title_fullStr Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction
title_full_unstemmed Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction
title_short Toward an Attentive Robotic Architecture: Learning-Based Mutual Gaze Estimation in Human–Robot Interaction
title_sort toward an attentive robotic architecture: learning-based mutual gaze estimation in human–robot interaction
topic Robotics and AI
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8935014/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35321344
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.770165
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