An application of passive human-robot interaction: human tracking based on attention distraction

There is much interest in developing methods that enable humans and robots to interact in a natural and unencumbered fashion. In natural human–robot interactions, the human can be considered as a passive user since he/she does not have to behave in an artificial manner. The robot is in the direct physical presence of the human, who does not need to use any unnatural interfaces such as the keyboard or mouse to interact with the robot. In this research, a taxonomy is introduced to cover important considerations for human–robot interactions. As an application of passive human–robot interaction, two modalities for localizing humans based on sound source localization and infrared motion detection have been developed and integrated with the face-tracker system of a humanoid, Intelligent Soft Arm Control (ISAC), in order to direct ISACs attention and to prevent it from being quickly distracted. The sound source localization and passive infrared (PIR) motion detection systems are used to provide the face-tracker system with candidate regions for finding a face. In order to avoid the situation where the robot appears to be “hyperactive” and cannot give sufficient attention to a newly discovered face, these sensing modules should not directly gain control of the tracking if the system has recently acquired a new face. Our goal is to allow a human to redirect the attention of the system but give the system a method to ignore the distraction if recently engaged.