Leveraging Ecological Psychology to Inform the Design of Human Intention and Affordance Recognition Systems

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• Dr Keith S. Jones (Associate Professor, Psychological Sciences, Texas Tech University, USA)
• Monday 08 July 2019, 11:00-12:00
• Computer Science, The Sloman Lounge (UG).

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Hector Basevi.

Host: Dr Mohan Sridharan

Abstract: Research inspired by Ecological Psychology can inform the design of human intention and affordance recognition systems. Regarding intention recognition, the Co-Specificity Hypothesis states that an intention to perform a given action, exploratory movement, and information about the ability to perform that action are uniquely related to one another. For example, if one intends to climb a stair, then one will explore in a specific way that generates information about one’s ability to climb that stair. Dr. Jones will discuss how co-specificity could be leveraged to recognize human intentions, and his perception-action research that aims to determine what exploratory movements are associated with specific intentions (e.g., what exploratory movements must one execute to perceive whether one can reach an object?). Regarding affordance recognition, the Ecological Psychology literature makes clear that observers can judge actors’ affordances. For example, observers can judge whether an actor can reach an object. Dr. Jones will discuss his perception-action research that aims to determine to what do observers attend when judging whether an actor can perform a given action (e.g., to what does an observer attend when judging whether an actor can reach something?). Through such research, Dr. Jones aims to inform the development of novel human intention and affordance recognition systems.

Biography: Dr. Keith S. Jones earned his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cincinnati under the supervision of Dr. Joel Warm. Dr. Jones previously worked for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (1997-1999) and Kansas State University (1999-2003). He is currently an Associate Professor, Associate Department Chair, and Director of the Human Factors Psychology Program at Texas Tech University (2003-present).

Dr. Jones’ research primarily concerns the overlap between James Gibson’s ecological approach to perception-action and robotics. He believes researching that overlap will ultimately lead to improvements in robotics and human-robot interaction, as well as a better understanding of human perception-action. Dr. Jones has received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Microsoft.

Website: http://www.depts.ttu.edu/psy/people/kjones/

This talk is part of the Artificial Intelligence and Natural Computation seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Artificial Intelligence and Natural Computation seminars
• Computer Science Departmental Series
• Computer Science Distinguished Seminars
• Computer Science, The Sloman Lounge (UG)
• computer sience

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