Autonomous Group Detection, Delineation, and Selection for Human-Agent Interaction

Ben Wright, J. Malcolm McCurry, Wallace Lawson, J. Gregory Trafton

Abstract: If a human and a robot team need to approach a specific group to make an announcement or delivery, how will the human describe which group to approach, and how will the robot approach the group? The robots will need to take a relatively arbitrary description of a group, identify that group from onboard sensors, and accurately approach the correct group. This task requires the robot to reason over and delineate individuals and groups from other individuals and groups. We ran a study on how people describe groups for delineation and identified the features most likely used by a person. We then present a framework that allows for an agent to detect, delineate, and select a given social group from the context of a description. We also present a group detection algorithm that works on a mobile platform in real-time and provide a formalization for a Group Selection Problem.