Analysis of human communication during assembly tasks

This paper studies human-to-human interaction in an attempt to reveal the kinds of human-to-machine interaction that will be necessary for intelligent robot learning of assembly tasks. Experiments were performed in which an "expert" guided an "apprentice" through a complex assembly task using spoken language but no visual communication. An analysis of the dialog reveals that certain protocols and conventions facilitate communication, and that communication breaks down when these protocols are not observed. Five types of protocols were observed: focusing, validators, referencing, descriptors and dialog structure. The implications of these results for human-robot communication are discussed.