An analysis of perceptual cues in robot group selection tasks

The aim of the proposed investigation is to provide the users with the capability of creating robot teams “on- the-fly” using grouping strategies expressed through speech. Our working hypothesis is that people are inclined to assemble objects into macro-entities, or groups, according to perceptual principles. We observed the real linguistic utterances used by individuals in a testing environment, showing that the type of robots and their mutual arrangements can affect both the choice of elements to form a team, and the way such choice is made. Moreover, we provide an initial insight for the capabilities needed by a robot for reasoning about its membership in a team.