The aim of the project is to first study, and gather data on, individuals' visual attention and resulting behavior in a group setting, and to use that data to create a cognitive model ready for export into the Ikaros open-source environment for controlling a robot arm. The ultimate goal of the project is to have a robot arm represent the attention of a human in a group setting by moving its head towards salient features of its surroundings, in the same natural way that a human would. One of the main challenges has been to simulate joint attention, an ability without which the robot would be incapable of appearing human-like at all. In this report, the solution to that and other challenges are presented.

The aim of the project is to first study, and gather data on, individuals' visual attention and resulting behavior in a group setting, and to use that data to create a cognitive model ready for export into the Ikaros open-source environment for controlling a robot arm. The ultimate goal of the project is to have a robot arm represent the attention of a human in a group setting by moving its head towards salient features of its surroundings, in the same natural way that a human would. One of the main challenges has been to simulate joint attention, an ability without which the robot would be incapable of appearing human-like at all. In this report, the solution to that and other challenges are presented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYB3cVVX53k