Mind-reading and imagination in robots

A collaborative humanoid robot is the kind of robot you know from sci-fi movies. They communicate with people naturally and need minimal input to understand what humans are really after. The value of these kinds of robots is clear, as they can help humans out in a whole range of annoying, dangerous, or even fun activities, without needing excessive training or instructions.

This level of collaboration between people, or robots and people, implies a few things. Firstly, they are using language to negotiate goals and to coordinate. When collaborating you aren’t just giving instructions, but rather trying to produce a shared understanding of goals, constraints, and plans. For example, it’s natural for humans to ask for clarification if they’re asked to do something and they cannot see the reason behind the request.

Secondly, both collaborators need to productively contribute, both in design of the shared plan and in its execution. Each is expected to offer up ideas and think through complications, and each needs to be able to take on some subset of the tasks that need to be done, and perform them with relative autonomy, while staying synchronised.

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