Spatial Interpretation of Pointing Gestures

指向手势的空间解释

• 批准号: 410915886
• 负责人: Privatdozent Dr. Oliver Herbort
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Psychologie III
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/410915886?language=en
• 关键词: Spatial; Interpretation; Pointing; Gestures

When we want to direct the attention of another person to a specific location or object, we often use pointing gestures. Pointing gestures are ubiquitously in the communication between humans and get increasingly relevant in human-computer and human-robot interaction. They facilitate interactions by complementing or replacing speech when it is difficult to indicate objects verbally (e.g. pointing at a specific star in the night sky). To understand such pointing gestures, an observer has to determine - among other things - which spatial location a pointer wants to indicate. Interestingly, how people extract the pointed-at position from another person's pointing gesture is not well understood. In recent work, we advanced our understanding by identifying two important factors that thwarted progress in previous studies. First, we showed that the pointer's posture needs to be precisely controlled. By contrast, it is insufficient to measure only the discrepancy between the position at which a (naïve) pointer points and the position identified by an observer, as has often been done in previous studies. Second, albeit observers may attempt to extrapolate a line from the pointer's arm and finger, their extrapolations are actually non-linear. We explained the non-linearity with a model that construes the extrapolation as the Bayesian-optimal integration of linear extrapolation and prior assumptions about likely referent positions. This model revealed a highly lawful relationship between a pointer's posture and an observer's spatial interpretation of the pointing act.With the proposed project, we systematically examine how important variables affect the spatial interpretation of pointing gestures in a highly controlled virtual reality environment. We expect that this enables to predict accurately how a given pointing gestures will be interpreted by a specific observer and which pointing gestures is best suited to single out a specific object or location.Nine experiments will be conducted that address the following questions. The first question is how the relevant spatial dimensions affect how pointing gestures are interpreted. The second question addresses how the observer's view-point affects the interpretation of pointing gestures. As a third question, we address how non-canonical pointing gestures are interpreted, in which the arm and finger are not aligned. As a forth question, we address how the spatial interpretation of a pointing gesture leads to the identification of one object and how object properties (size, relevance) affect this process. Fifth, we test whether the processes identified in highly controlled virtual reality settings are also reflected in more natural communication between humans. The results may be applied to improve embodied interaction in real-life, virtual or robotic systems, and provide a testbed for basic mechanisms of human perception.

当我们想将另一个人的注意力引导到特定位置或对象时，我们经常使用指向手势。指向手势在人类之间的交流中普遍存在，并且在人类计算机和人类机器人的相互作用中越来越相关。当难以口头表明对象时，它们通过完成或替换语音来促进互动（例如指向夜空中的特定恒星）。要理解这种指向手势，观察者必须确定指针想要指出的空间位置外，还必须确定。有趣的是，人们如何从另一个人的指向手势中提取尖锐的立场并不能很好地理解。在最近的工作中，我们通过确定两个重要因素来阻止先前的研究进展，提高我们的理解。首先，我们证明了指针的姿势需要精确控制。相比之下，不足以仅衡量（天真的）指针点与观察者确定的位置之间的差异，就像以前的研究中经常所做的那样。其次，尽管观察者可能会尝试从指针的手臂和手指推断一条线，但他们的外推实际上是非线性的。我们用一个模型解释了非线性，该模型将外推定为线性外推的贝叶斯最佳整合，并且对可能的参考位置的先前假设。该模型揭示了指针的姿势与观察者对指向行为的空间解释之间的高度合法关系。在拟议项目的情况下，我们系统地研究了重要变量如何影响高度控制的虚拟现实环境中指向手势的空间解释。我们希望这能够准确预测特定观察者将如何解释给定的指向手势，以及哪些指向手势最适合挑选特定的对象或位置。将进行九个实验，以解决以下问题。第一个问题是相关的空间维度如何影响指向手势的解释。第二个问题介绍了观察者的视点如何影响指向手势的解释。作为第三个问题，我们解决了如何解释非规范指向的手势，其中手臂和手指不对齐。作为一个问题，我们解决了指向手势的空间解释如何导致一个对象的识别以及对象属性（大小，相关性）如何影响此过程。第五，我们测试在人类之间更自然的交流中是否也反映了高度控制的虚拟现实环境中确定的过程。结果可用于改善现实生活，虚拟或机器人系统中的具体相互作用，并为人类感知的基本机制提供测试床。