Human to robot demonstrations of routine home tasks: exploring the role of the robot's feedback

In this paper, we explore some conceptual issues, relevant for the design of robotic systems aimed at interacting with humans in domestic environments. More specifically, we study the role of the robot's feedback (positive or negative acknowledgment of understanding) on a human teacher's demonstration of a routine home task (laying a table). Both the human and the system's perspectives are considered in the analysis and discussion of results from a human-robot user study, highlighting some important conceptual and practical issues. These include the lack of explicitness and consistency on people's demonstration strategies. Furthermore, we discuss the need to investigate design strategies to elicit people's knowledge about the task and also successfully advertize the robot's abilities in order to promote people's ability to provide appropriate demonstrations.