Based on a study of the engagement process between humans, I have developed models for four types of connection events involving gesture and speech: directed gaze, mutual facial gaze, adjacency pairs and backchannels. I have developed and validated a reusable Robot Operating System (ROS) module that supports engagement between a human and a humanoid robot by generating appropriate connection events. The module implements policies for adding gaze and pointing gestures to referring phrases (including deictic and anaphoric references), performing end-of-turn gazes, responding to human-initiated connection events and maintaining engagement. The module also provides an abstract interface for receiving information from a collaboration manager using the Behavior Markup Language (BML) and exchanges information with a previously developed engagement recognition module. This thesis also describes a Behavior Markup Language (BML) realizer that has been developed for use in robotic applications. Instead of the existing fixed-timing algorithms used with virtual agents, this realizer uses an event-driven architecture, based on Petri nets, to ensure each behavior is synchronized in the presence of unpredictable variability in robot motor systems. The implementation is robot independent, open-source and uses the Robot Operating System (ROS).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:wpi.edu/oai:digitalcommons.wpi.edu:etd-theses-1327 |
| Date | 26 April 2011 |
| Creators | Holroyd, Aaron |
| Contributors | Charles Rich, Advisor, David C. Brown, Reader, |
| Publisher | Digital WPI |
| Source Sets | Worcester Polytechnic Institute |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Masters Theses (All Theses, All Years) |
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