Triface: the interactions between human, robot and environment

The concept "triface", which can provide a unified view of the interactions between human, robot and environment, is proposed and discussed. Traditional concept "interface" mainly focuses on the relationship between two elements, e.g. human and robot, human and computer, human and machine. The triface includes the interactions with the third element: environment, which does not belong to human or robot. The environment can play an important role to the robot-human interactions, especially in the case when a robot has to learn both a human and an environmental model autonomously. The variations of the interactions in the triface are discussed, and we describe the concept which will help the robot to learn how to communicate to the human and how to operate the environment. We also introduce ongoing projects, which are done on the experimental platform developed for the triface researches, and explain the similarity of the framework to the infant developmental processes.