Modeling visual attention-particularly stimulus-driven, saliency-based attention-has been a very active research area over the past 25 years. Many different models of attention are now available which, aside from lending theoretical contributions to other fields, have demonstrated successful applications in computer vision, mobile robotics, and cognitive systems. Here we review, from a computational perspective, the basic concepts of attention implemented in these models. We present a taxonomy of nearly 65 models, which provides a critical comparison of approaches, their capabilities, and shortcomings. In particular, 13 criteria derived from behavioral and computational studies are formulated for qualitative comparison of attention models. Furthermore, we address several challenging issues with models, including biological plausibility of the computations, correlation with eye movement datasets, bottom-up and top-down dissociation, and constructing meaningful performance measures. Finally, we highlight current research trends in attention modeling and provide insights for future.

State-of-the-Art in Visual Attention Modeling

Based on concepts of the human visual system, computational visual attention systems aim to detect regions of interest in images. Psychologists, neurobiologists, and computer scientists have investigated visual attention thoroughly during the last decades and profited considerably from each other. However, the interdisciplinarity of the topic holds not only benefits but also difficulties: Concepts of other fields are usually hard to access due to differences in vocabulary and lack of knowledge of the relevant literature. This article aims to bridge this gap and bring together concepts and ideas from the different research areas. It provides an extensive survey of the grounding psychological and biological research on visual attention as well as the current state of the art of computational systems. Furthermore, it presents a broad range of applications of computational attention systems in fields like computer vision, cognitive systems, and mobile robotics. We conclude with a discussion on the limitations and open questions in the field.

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Computational visual attention systems and their cognitive foundations: A survey

Most individuals in both developing and developed countries who experience mental illness do not receive psychological services. The dominant model of delivering services used in developed countries (individual therapy by a highly trained mental health professional) can provide effective (i.e., evidence-based) treatments but is greatly limited as a means of reaching the large swath of individuals in need. We highlight several models outside the mental health professions (e.g., public health, medicine, business) that are more affordable and accessible and can be scaled up to reach many individuals in need. These models include task shifting, disruptive innovations, interventions in everyday settings, best-buy interventions, lifestyle changes, and social media. We convey their key characteristics and how they have been or can be applied to mental health. We end by discussing challenges in applying the models, critical issues on which effective treatment delivery depends, and paths to make progress.

Novel Models for Delivering Mental Health Services and Reducing the Burdens of Mental Illness

Objective With an elderly population that is set to more than double by 2050 worldwide, there will be an increased demand for elderly care. This poses several impediments in the delivery of high-quality health and social care. Socially assistive robot (SAR) technology could assume new roles in health and social care to meet this higher demand. This review qualitatively examines the literature on the use of SAR in elderly care and aims to establish the roles this technology may play in the future. Design Scoping review. Data sources Search of CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, PsychINFO and Scopus databases was conducted, complemented with a free search using Google Scholar and reference harvesting. All publications went through a selection process, which involved sequentially reviewing the title, abstract and full text of the publication. No limitations regarding date of publication were imposed, and only English publications were taken into account. The main search was conducted in March 2016, and the latest search was conducted in September 2017. Eligibility criteria The inclusion criteria consist of elderly participants, any elderly healthcare facility, humanoid and pet robots and all social interaction types with the robot. Exclusions were acceptability studies, technical reports of robots and publications surrounding physically or surgically assistive robots. Results In total, 61 final publications were included in the review, describing 33 studies and including 1574 participants and 11 robots. 28 of the 33 papers report positive findings. Five roles of SAR were identified: affective therapy, cognitive training, social facilitator, companionship and physiological therapy. Conclusions Although many positive outcomes were reported, a large proportion of the studies have methodological issues, which limit the utility of the results. Nonetheless, the reported value of SAR in elderly care does warrant further investigation. Future studies should endeavour to validate the roles demonstrated in this review. Systematic review registration NIHR 58672.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/8/2/e018815.full.pdf

Scoping review on the use of socially assistive robot technology in elderly care

rectly indexed: Alvaro Garcia Meseguer should be listed under Garcia, and Gilbert Narro Garcia should probably be indexed as Narro. In a book dedicated to feminist research, it might well be appropriate to give preference to mother’s names, but such a departure from traditional practice, if deliberate, would presumably be called to the reader’s attention. In conclusion, this volume is highly recommended. The series of essays compares favourably in coverage and quality to other collections, and the annotated bibliography represents a unique contribution. Researchers will find it indispensable, teachers and students will find it to be an excellent textbook for courses which consider issues of language and gender, and the general reader with an interest in the subject who browses through the bibliography will be richly rewarded.

Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk among Friends:

Research on social robots is mainly comprised of research into algorithmic problems in order to expand a robot´s capabilities to improve communication with human beings. Also, a large body of research concentrates on the appearance, i.e. aesthetic form of social robots. However, only little reference to their definition is made. In this paper we argue that form, function, and context have to be taken systematically into account in order to develop a model to help us understand social robots. Therefore, we address the questions: What is a social robot, what are the interdisciplinary research aspects of social robotics, and how are these different aspects interlinked? In order to present a comprehensive and concise overview of the various aspects we present a framework for a definition towards social robots.

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Understanding Social Robots

New knowledge has met with ambivalence, as is documented in myths ever since that of Prometheus. This ambivalence is also apparent in the representations of science in literature and the popular media, most prominent among them movies. Shelley's Frankenstein has become the icon of the "mad scientist" as depicted by filmmakers ever since the 1930s. To trace such patterns of ambivalence and stereotypes of scientists and science in fiction film, 222 movies were analyzed. It is apparent that modification of, and intervention into, the human body, the violation of human nature, and threats to human health by means of science are depicted as the most alarming aspects of scientific inquiry. The threat is dramatized by being associated with the image of the scientist as pursuing the quest for new knowledge in secrecy, outside the controls of academic institutions and peers. Scientific research as perceived by fiction film is seldom a venture across the boundaries of the permissible.

Of Power Maniacs and Unethical Geniuses: Science and Scientists in Fiction Film:

How to teach actions to a robot as well as how a robot learns actions is an important issue to be discussed in designing robot learning systems. Inspired by human parent-infant interaction, we hypothesize that a robot equipped with infant-like abilities can take advantage of parental proper teaching. Parents are known to significantly alter their infant-directed actions versus adult-directed ones, e.g. make more pauses between movements, which is assumed to aid the infants' understanding of the actions. As a first step, we analyzed parental actions using a primal attention model. The model based on visual saliency can detect likely important locations in a scene without employing any knowledge about the actions or the environment. Our statistical analysis revealed that the model was able to extract meaningful structures of the actions, e.g. the initial and final state of the actions and the significant state changes in them, which were highlighted by parental action modifications. We further discuss the issue of designing an infant-like robot that can induce parent-like teaching, and present a human-robot interaction experiment evaluating our robot simulation equipped with the saliency model.

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Toward designing a robot that learns actions from parental demonstrations

https://aiweb.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/files/3b-Feedback.pdf

Appropriate feedback in asymmetric interactions

We suggest that people's responses to a robot of which attention starts to be distracted show whether they accept the robot as an intentional communication partner or not. Human-robot interaction (HRI) as well as human-human interaction (HHI) is sometimes interrupted by disturbing factors. However, in HHI people continue to communicate with a partner because they presuppose that the partner may shift his/her interactive orientation based on his/her internal state. We designed a communication robot equipped with a mechanism of saliency-based visual attention and evaluated it in an observational experiment of HRI. Our sociological analysis of people's responses to our robot showed that it was accepted as a proactive communication agent. When the robot shifted its attention to an irrelative target, the human partners, for example, followed the line of the robot's gaze and tried to regain its attention by exaggerating their actions and increasing their communication channels as they would do toward a human partner. Based on these results, we conclude that disturbance can be an encouraging factor for human activity in HRI. The results are discussed from both a sociological and an engineering point of view.

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Claudia Muhl

Papers

Understanding Social Robots

Of Power Maniacs and Unethical Geniuses: Science and Scientists in Fiction Film:

Toward designing a robot that learns actions from parental demonstrations

Appropriate feedback in asymmetric interactions

Does Disturbance Discourage People from Communicating with a Robot