A New, HRI Inspired, View of Intention and Intention Communication

Intention is one of the most important concepts in understanding human subjective existence as well as in creating naturally interacting artifacts and robots. Currently intention is modeled as a fixed yet may be unknown value that affects the behavior of humans and is communicated in natural interactions. This folk psychology inspired vision is underlying the understanding of intention in AI, and HRI. Despite this wide utilization, this view of intention is challenged by recent results in experimental psychology and neuroscience. The contribution of this paper is two fold: 1) A new theory for understanding both intention (Intention as a Reactive Plan) and intention communication (the Intention through Interaction hypothesis) is proposed and compared with the traditional view. 2) Three concrete systems based on the proposed view of intention in the areas of HRI, Intelligent User Interfaces, and Robotic Control Architectures are introduced with comparisons to traditional view based systems. This novelle approach to intention can inform research in HRI toward more naturally interactive robots and psychology toward a better understanding of our own intentions.