The role of gaze as a deictic cue in human robot interaction

Abstract

Gaze has a major role in social interaction. As a deictic reference, gaze aims at attracting visual attention of a communication partner to a referred entity in the environment. Gaze direction in natural faces is a well-investigated domain of research at behavioral and neurophysiological levels. However, our knowledge about deictic role of gaze in Human Robot Interaction is limited. The present study focuses on a comparative analysis of the deictic role of gaze direction in alternative face morphologies. We report an experimental study that investigated deictic gaze in a virtual reality environment. Human participants identified object locations by utilizing deictic gaze cues provided by avatar faces, as well as natural human faces. Our findings reveal a facilitating role in the accuracy of objection detection in favor of gaze embedded in natural faces compared to gaze embedded in synthetic avatar face morphologies.