Light signaling for social interaction with mobile robots

To give autonomous mobile robots some kind of "social intelligence", they need to be able to recognize and interact with other agents in the world. This paper describes how a light signaling device can be used to identify another individual and to communicate simple information. By having the agents relatively close to each other, they share the same perceptual space, which allows them to sense or deduce implicit information concerning the context of their interaction. Using a vision- and sonar-based Pioneer I robot equipped with a colored-light signaling device, experimental results demonstrate how the robot. can interact with a human interlocutor in a ball-passing game.