research-article

Towards a simple robotic theory of mind

Authors:

Kyung-Joong Kim,

Hod LipsonAuthors Info & Claims

PerMIS '09: Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems

Pages 131 - 138

https://doi.org/10.1145/1865909.1865937

Published: 21 September 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Theory of mind (ToM) is a cognitive function in which an agent can infer another agent's internal state and intention based on their behaviors. Can robots realize ToM like humans? There are many issues to be tackled to address this challenging problem, such as the representation, discovery and exploitation of an actor's self models. In this paper we study how robots can represent other's self with artificial neural networks and an evolutionary learning mechanism. This framework was tested with simulated and physical robots and a novel prey-predator scenario was introduced to measure the performance of ToM learning. Experimental results showed that the proposed ToM approach can recover other's self models successfully.

References

[1]

D. G. Premack, and G. Woodruff, "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 515--526, 1978.

[2]

C. Zimmer, "How the mind reads other minds," Science, vol. 300, pp. 1079--1080, 16 May 2003.

[3]

M. Siegal, and R. Varley, "Neural systems involved in 'theory of mind'," Nature Reviews-Neuroscience, vol. 3, pp. 463--471, June 2002.

[4]

J. Call, and M. Tomasello, "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 187--192, 2008.

[5]

B. Scassellati, Foundations for a Theory of Mind for a Humanoid Robot, Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001.

Digital Library

[6]

D. Buchsbaum, B. Blumberg, C. Breazeal and A. N. Meltzoff, "A simulation-theory inspired social learning system for interactive characters," IEEE International Workshop on Robots and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 85--90, 2005.

[7]

F. Hegel, S. Krach, T. Kircher, B. Wrede, and G. Sagerer, "Theory of mind (ToM) on robots: A functional neuroimaging study," Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction, pp. 335--342, 2008.

Digital Library

[8]

T. Ono, and M. Imai, "Reading a robot's mind: A model of utterance understanding based on the theory of mind mechanism," Proceedings of the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 142--148, 2000.

Digital Library

[9]

J. Bongard, and H. Lipson, "Automated reverse engineering of nonlinear dynamical systems," Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, vol. 104, no. 24, pp. 9943--9948, 2007.

[10]

J. Bongard, V. Zykov, and H. Lipson, "Resilient machines through continuous self-modeling," Science, vol. 314, no. 5802, pp. 1118--1121, 2006.

[11]

C. M. Heyes, "Theory of mind in nonhuman primates," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 21, pp. 101--148, 1998.

[12]

J. Call and M. Tomasello, "Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 187--192, 2008.

[13]

B. Hare, J. Call, and M. Tomasello, "Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know?," Animal Behaviour, vol. 61, pp. 139--151, 2001.

[14]

B. Hare, J. Call, B. Agnetta, and M. Tomasello, "Chimpanzees know what conspecifics do and do not see," Animal Behaviour, vol. 59, pp. 771--785, 2000.

[15]

M. Tomasello, J. Call and B. Hare, "Chimpanzees understand psychological states -- The question is which ones and to what extent," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 153--156, 2003.

[16]

S. Baron-Cohen, A. M. Leslie, and U. Frith, "Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"?," Cognition, vol. 21, pp. 37--46, 1985.

[17]

S. Baron-Cohen, Mindblindness, MIT Press, 1997.

[18]

S. Ozonoff, B. F. Pennington, and S. J. Rogers, "Executive function deficits in high-functioning autistic individuals: Relationship to theory of mind," Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 32, no. 7, pp. 1081--1105, 1991.

[19]

G. L. Youmans, Theory of Mind in Individuals with Alzheimer-Type Dementia Profiles, Ph.D. Thesis of College of Communication at the Florida State University, 2004.

[20]

A. M. Leslie, O. Friedman, and T. P. German, "Core mechanisms in 'theory of mind'," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 528--533, 2004.

[21]

R. Langdon, and M. Coltheart, "Visual perspective taking and schizotypy: Evidence for a simulation-based account of mentalizing in normal adults," Cognition, vol. 82, 1--26, 2001.

[22]

A. Gopnik and H. Wellman, "Why the child's theory of mind really is a theory," Mind and Language, vol. 7, pp. 145--171, 1995.

[23]

E. Herrmann, J. Call, M. V. Hernandez-Lloreda, B Hare, and M. Tomasello, "Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: The cultural intelligence hypothesis," Science, vol. 317, pp. 1360--1366, 2007.

[24]

T. Falck-Ytter, G. Gredeback and C. von Hofsten, "Infants predict other people's action goals," Nature Neuroscience, vol. 9, no. 7, pp. 878--879, 2006.

[25]

K. H. Onishi, and R. Baillargeon, "Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs?," Science, vol. 308, pp. 255--258, 2005.

[26]

R. S. Rosenbaum, D. T. Stuss, B. Levine and E. Tulving, "Theory of mind is independent of episodic memory," Science, vol. 318, p. 1257, 2007.

[27]

P. Bloom, "Precis of how children learn the meanings of words," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1095--1103, 2001.

[28]

V. Gallese and A. Goldman, "Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 2, no. 12, pp. 493--501, 1998.

[29]

S.-J. Blakemore, and J. Decety, "From the perception of action to the understanding of intention," Nature Reviews -- Neuroscience, vol. 2, pp. 561--567, 2001.

[30]

N. Ramnani, and R. C. Miall, "A system in the human brain for predicting the actions of others," Nature Neuroscience, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 85--90, 2004.

[31]

N. Sebanz and C. Frith, "Beyond simulation? Neural mechanisms for predicting the actions of others," Nature Neuroscience, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 5--6, 2004.

[32]

M. Siegal, and R. Varley, "Neural systems involved in 'theory of mind'," Nature Reviews-Neuroscience, vol. 3, pp. 463--471, June 2002.

[33]

R. Saxe, S. Carey, and N. Kanwisher, "Understanding other minds: Linking developmental psychology and functional neuroimaging," Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 55, pp. 87--124, 2004.

[34]

C. D. Frith, and U. Frith, "Interacting minds-A biological basis," Science, vol. 286, pp. 1692--1695, 1999.

[35]

K. McCabe, D. Houser, L. Ryan, V. Smith, and T. Trouard, "A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 98, no. 20, pp. 11832--11835, 2001.

[36]

H. L. Gallagher, and C. D. Frith, "Functional imaging of 'theory of mind'," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 77--83, 2003.

[37]

S. Krach, F. Hegel, B. Wrede, G. Sagerer, F. Binkofski, and T. Kircher, "Can machines think? Interaction and perspective taking with robots investigated via fMRI," PLOS One, vol. 3, no. 7, e2597, 2008.

[38]

A. N. Hampton, P. Bossaerts, and J. P. O'Doherty, "Neural correlates of mentalizing-related computations during strategic interactions in humans," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 105, no. 18, pp. 6741--6746, 2008.

[39]

C. Peters, "A perceptually-based theory of mind for agent interaction initiation," International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 321--339, 2006.

[40]

R. E. Kaliouby, and P. Robinson, "Mind reading machines: Automated inference of cognitive mental states from video," IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, pp. 682--688, 2004.

[41]

T. Bosse, Z. A. Memon, and J. Treur, "A two-level BDI-agent model for theory of mind and its use in social manipulation," Proceedings of the Artificial and Ambient Intelligence Conference, pp. 335--342, 2007.

[42]

D. V. Pynadath, and S. C. Marsella, "PsychSim: Theory of mind with decision-theoretic agents," Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 1181--1186, 2005.

Digital Library

[43]

M. Takano, and T. Arita, "Asymmetry between even and odd levels of recursion in a theory of mind," Proceedings of ALIFE X, pp. 405--411, 2006.

[44]

F. Zanlungo, "A collision-avoiding mechanism based on a theory of mind," Advances in Complex Systems, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 363--371, 2007.

[45]

K. Kondo, and I. Nishikawa, "The role that the internal model of the others plays in cooperative behavior," Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 265--270, 2003.

[46]

S. Bringsjord, A. Shilliday, D. Werner, M. Clark, E. Charpentier, and A. Bringsjord, "Toward logic-based cognitively robust synthetic characters in digital environments," Proceedings of the First Artificial General Intelligence, pp. 87--98, 2008.

Digital Library

[47]

R. Kelley, C. King, A. Tavakkoli, M. Nicolescu, M. Nicolescu, and G. Bebis, "An architecture for understanding intent using a novel hidden markov formulation," International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 1--22, 2008.

[48]

C. Breazeal, D. Buchsbaum, J. Gray, D. Gatenby, and B. Blumberg, "Learning from and about others: Towards using imitation to bootstrap the social understanding of others by robots," Artificial Life, vol. 11, pp. 31--62, 2005.

Digital Library

[49]

R. Yokoya, T. Ogata, J. Tani, K. Komatani, and H. G. Okuno, "Discovery of other individuals by projecting a self-model through imitation," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 1009--1014, 2007.

[50]

Y. Demiris, and M. Johnson, "Distributed, predictive perception of actions: A biologically inspired robotics architecture for imitation and learning," Connection Science, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 231--243, 2003.

[51]

T. Takanashi, T. Kawamata, M. Asada, and M. Negrello, "Emulation and behavior understanding through shared values," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3950--3955, 2007.

[52]

Y. Kuniyoshi, Y. Yorozu, Y. Ohmura, K. Terada, T. Otani, A. Nagakubo, and T. Yamamoto, "From humanoid embodiment to theory of mind," Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 3139, pp. 202--218, 2004.

[53]

H. Kozima, and J. Zlatev, "An epigenetic approach to human-robot communication," Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 346--351, 2000.

[54]

T. Ono, and M. Imai, "Reading a robot's mind: A model of utterance understanding based on the theory of mind mechanism," Proceedings of the 17th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 142--148, 2000.

Digital Library

[55]

K. Terada, T. Shamoto, H. Mei, and A. Ito, "Reactive movements of non-humanoid robots cause intention attribution in humans," IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 3715--3720, 2007.

[56]

K. Terada, T. Shamoto, and A. Ito, "Utilizing theory of mind on human agent interaction," IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 757--762, 2006.

[57]

P. Michel, K. Gold, and B. Scassellati, "Motion-based robotic self-recognition," Proceedings of 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 2763--2768, 2003.

[58]

N. C. Kramer, "Theory of mind as a theoretical prerequisite to model communication with virtual humans," Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 4930, pp. 222--240, 2008.

Digital Library

[59]

K. A. McCabe, V. L. Smith, and M. Lepore, "Intentionality detection and "mindreading": Why does game form matter?," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 97, no. 8, pp. 4404--4409, 2000.

[60]

G. Boella, L. van der Torre, "From the theory of mind to the construction of social reality," Proceedings of CogSci, pp. 298--303, 2005.

[61]

Y. Akiwa, Y. Suga, T. Ogata, and S. Sugano, "Imitation based human-robot interaction-roles of joint attention and motion prediction," Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, pp. 283--288, 2004.

[62]

L. Flax, "Logical modeling of Leslie's theory of mind," Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Informatics, pp. 25--30, 2006.

[63]

L. Hall, S. Woods, R. Aylett, and A. Paiva, "Using theory of mind methods to investigate empathic engagement with synthetic characters," International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 351--370, 2006.

[64]

K.-J. Kim and H. Lipson, "Towards a "theory of mind" in simulated robots," Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 2071--2076, 2009.

Digital Library

Cited By

Scott ANeumann DNiess JWoźniak P(2023)Do You Mind? User Perceptions of Machine ConsciousnessProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581296(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581296
Wang QSaha KGregori EJoyner DGoel AKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)Towards Mutual Theory of Mind in Human-AI Interaction: How Language Reflects What Students Perceive About a Virtual Teaching AssistantProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445645(1-14)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445645
Chen BVondrick CLipson H(2021)Visual behavior modelling for robotic theory of mindScientific Reports10.1038/s41598-020-77918-x11:1Online publication date: 11-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77918-x
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Towards a simple robotic theory of mind
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Knowledge representation and reasoning
      1. Cognitive robotics
    2. Philosophical/theoretical foundations of artificial intelligence
      1. Cognitive science

Recommendations

Theory of Mind Improves Human’s Trust in an Iterative Human-Robot Game
HAI '21: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction

Trust is a critical issue in human–robot interactions as it is at the base of the establishment of solid relationships. Theory of Mind (ToM) is the cognitive skill that allows us to understand what others think and believe. Several studies in HRI and ...
Towards a "theory of mind" in simulated robots
GECCO '09: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference Companion on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference: Late Breaking Papers

The psychology term Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability of an agent to recognize that an observed actor acts according to intentions and plans. In humans and some primates, ToM is fundamental to effective cooperation and competition, and is a key ...
Theory of mind (ToM) on robots: a functional neuroimaging study
HRI '08: Proceedings of the 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on Human robot interaction

Theory of Mind (ToM) is not only a key capability for cognitive development but also for successful social interaction. In order for a robot to interact successfully with a human both interaction partners need to have an adequate representation of the ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

PerMIS '09: Proceedings of the 9th Workshop on Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems

September 2009

322 pages

ISBN:9781605587479

DOI:10.1145/1865909

General Chair:
Raj Madhavan
Oak Ridge National Laboratory/NIST
,
Program Chair:
Elena Messina
Intelligent Systems Division, NIST

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

NIST: National Institute of Standards and Technology

In-Cooperation

SIGAI: ACM Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 September 2009

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Funding Sources

Conference

PerMIS '09

Sponsor:

NIST

PerMIS '09: Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems

September 21 - 23, 2009

Maryland, Gaithersburg

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

9
Total Citations
View Citations
272
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)19
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 25 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Scott ANeumann DNiess JWoźniak P(2023)Do You Mind? User Perceptions of Machine ConsciousnessProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581296(1-19)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581296
Wang QSaha KGregori EJoyner DGoel AKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)Towards Mutual Theory of Mind in Human-AI Interaction: How Language Reflects What Students Perceive About a Virtual Teaching AssistantProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445645(1-14)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445645
Chen BVondrick CLipson H(2021)Visual behavior modelling for robotic theory of mindScientific Reports10.1038/s41598-020-77918-x11:1Online publication date: 11-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77918-x
Kim KCho S(2020)Inference of Other’s Minds with Limited Information in Evolutionary RoboticsInternational Journal of Social Robotics10.1007/s12369-020-00660-xOnline publication date: 31-May-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00660-x
Winfield A(2018)Experiments in Artificial Theory of Mind: From Safety to Story-TellingFrontiers in Robotics and AI10.3389/frobt.2018.000755Online publication date: 26-Jun-2018
https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2018.00075
Hellström TBensch S(2018)Understandable robots - What, Why, and HowPaladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics10.1515/pjbr-2018-00099:1(110-123)Online publication date: 11-Jul-2018
https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2018-0009
Kim KCho S(2015)Inference of other’s internal neural models from active observationBiosystems10.1016/j.biosystems.2015.01.005128(37-47)Online publication date: Feb-2015
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2015.01.005
Tiberio LCesta AOlivetti Belardinelli M(2013)Psychophysiological Methods to Evaluate User’s Response in Human Robot Interaction: A Review and Feasibility StudyRobotics10.3390/robotics20200922:2(92-121)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2013
https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics2020092
Kim KKang Yong Eo Ye Ran Jung Si On Kim Cho S(2013)Evolutionary conditions for the emergence of robotic theory of mind with multiple goals2013 IEEE Workshop on Robotic Intelligence in Informationally Structured Space (RiiSS)10.1109/RiiSS.2013.6607928(43-49)Online publication date: Apr-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/RiiSS.2013.6607928

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents