Robots with Theory of Mind for Humans: A Survey*

Nikolos Gurney, David V. Pynadath

Abstract: Theory of Mind (ToM) is a psychological construct that captures the ability to ascribe mental states to others and then use those representations for explaining and predicting behavior. We review recent progress in endowing artificially intelligent robots with ToM. A broad array of modeling, experimental, and benchmarking approaches and methods are present in the extant literature. Unlike other domains of human cognition for which research has achieved super-human capabilities, ToM for robots lacks a unified construct and is not consistently benchmarked or validated—realities which possibly hinder progress in this domain. We argue that this is, at least in part, due to inconsistent defining of ToM, no presence of a unifying modeling construct, and the absence of a shared data resource. We believe these would improve the ability of the research community to compare the ToM abilities of different systems. We suggest that establishing a shared definition of ToM, creating a shared data resource that supports consistent benchmarking & validation, and developing a generalized modeling tool are critical steps towards giving robots ToM capabilities that lay observers will recognize as such.