Behavioral Implicit Communication for Human-Robot Interaction

In Human-Robot Interaction domain many solutions have been proposed in order to achieve a smooth and natural communication and interaction: speech and other kinds of language, as well as others human typical ways of communication, such as gestures and facial expressions. We argue that a very necessary and effective way of improving HRI, at least from a theoretical point of view, could be purposive mutual understanding, i.e. practical behaviors aimed to achieve a pragmatic goal as well as a communicative one, without any further specification. We start by discussing socially interactive robots and the solutions adopted to making them communicate. We then present our communication through actions theory, explaining why actions are so important and describing the path leading from actions to gestures. Finally, we discuss some implications of this way of communicating in the HRI field. 1