Establishing communication in an artificial interaction environment

We investigated how humans establish communication in a novel environment using an artificial cooperative task. Subjects are asked to solve a kind of 8-puzzle game cooperatively. One subject (director) can see the design of the puzzle and instructs how to move a tile. The other (operator) cannot see the design but can manipulate the puzzle. The director can communicate his intention only through his body movement. We conducted two experiments. In Experiment I, the operator role is played by the experimenter, who follows the pre-determined algorithms for establishing communication. The director role is played by a recruited subject. In Experiment II, both the director and the operator roles are played by recruited subjects. In both the experiments, simple languages for communication were developed between the players, but the strategies adopted were quite different. The results correspond to two approaches to future Human-Agent communication - human-controlled communication and mind-reading communication. We should re-consider the role of mind-reading communication in designing Human-Agent interface.