Abstract

Despite increasing efforts in the field of social
robotics and interactive systems integrated and fully autonomous
robots which are capable of learning from interaction
with inexperienced and non-expert users are still a rarity.
However, in order to tackle the challenge of learning by
interaction robots need to be equipped with a set of basic
behaviors and abilities which have to be coupled and combined
in a flexible manner. This paper presents how a recently
proposed information-driven integration concept termed “active
memory” is adopted to realize learning-enabling behaviors for
a domestic robot. These behaviors enable it to (i) learn about its
environment, (ii) interact with several humans simultaneously,
and (iii) couple learning and interaction tightly. The basic
interaction strategies on the basis of information exchange
through the active memory are presented. A brief discussion
of results obtained from live user trials with inexperienced
users in a home tour scenario underpin the relevance and
appropriateness of the described concepts.