Developing a model of robot behavior to identify and appropriately respond to implicit attention-shifting

In this paper, we present our current research on developing a model of robot behavior that leads to feelings of “being together” using the robot´s body position and orientation. Creating feelings of “being together” will be an essential skill for robots that live with humans and adapt to daily human activities such as walking together or establishing joint attention to information in the environment. We observe people´s proxemic behavior in joint attention situations and develop a model of behavior for robots to detect a partner´s attention shift and appropriately adjust its body position and orientation in establishing joint attention with the partner. We experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of our model, and our results demonstrate the model´s effectiveness.