Cognitive map architecture: Facilitation of human - Robot interaction in humanoid robots

Among the challenges of building robots for everyday environments is the need to integrate diverse systems and subsystems. Here, we describe a step in this direction: the Cognitive Map robot architecture. It supports a flexible multicomponent system that can be dynamically reconfigured to handle different applications with minimal changes to the system. Runtime activation of traditional and hybrid robot architecture paradigms for any particular task is supported. Our method of isolating the communication interface within a single application programming interface (API) layer supports loose coupling between components, allowing easy integration of legacy code and expansion of existing systems. We classify the components into four main roles: perception, knowledge/state representation, decision-making, and expression. Interaction, Task Matrix and Multimodal Communication are modules built in this system for facilitating human-robot interaction with the humanoid robot ASIMO built by Honda Motor Co., Ltd.We describe the key ideas behind the architecture and illustrate how they are implemented in a memory card game application where people interact with ASIMO. Through our experience and comparison with alternative approaches, we show that the Cognitive Map architecture significantly facilitates implementation of human-robot interactive scenarios.