Attracting attention and establishing a communication channel based on the level of visual focus of attention

Recent research in HRI has emphasized the need to design affective interaction systems equipped with social intelligence. A robot´s awareness of its social role encompasses the ability to behave in a socially acceptable manner, the ability to communicate appropriately according to the situation, and the ability to detect the feelings of interactive partners, as humans do with one another. In this paper, we propose an intelligent robotic method of attracting a target person´s attention in a way congruent to satisfying these social requirements. If the robot needs to initiate communication urgently, such as in the case of reporting an emergency, it does not need to consider the current situation of the person it is addressing. Otherwise, the robot should observe the person to ascertain who or what s/he is looking at (VFOA), and how attentively s/he is doing so (VFOA level). Moreover, the robot must identify an appropriate time at which to attract the target person´s attention so as to not interfere with his/her work. We have realized just such a robotic system by developing computer vision methods to detect a target person´s VFOA and its level, and testing the system´s effectiveness in a series of experiments.