Division of Molecular Psychiatry, Translational Research Center, University Hospital of Psychiatry University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Brain Research Institute, Los Angeles, California.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2018 Mar;39(3):1145-1162. doi: 10.1002/hbm.23905. Epub 2017 Dec 5.
With advances in technology, artificial agents such as humanoid robots will soon become a part of our daily lives. For safe and intuitive collaboration, it is important to understand the goals behind their motor actions. In humans, this process is mediated by changes in activity in fronto-parietal brain areas. The extent to which these areas are activated when observing artificial agents indicates the naturalness and easiness of interaction. Previous studies indicated that fronto-parietal activity does not depend on whether the agent is human or artificial. However, it is unknown whether this activity is modulated by observing grasping (self-related action) and pointing actions (other-related action) performed by an artificial agent depending on the action goal. Therefore, we designed an experiment in which subjects observed human and artificial agents perform pointing and grasping actions aimed at two different object categories suggesting different goals. We found a signal increase in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule and the premotor cortex when tool versus food items were pointed to or grasped by both agents, probably reflecting the association of hand actions with the functional use of tools. Our results show that goal attribution engages the fronto-parietal network not only for observing a human but also a robotic agent for both self-related and social actions. The debriefing after the experiment has shown that actions of human-like artificial agents can be perceived as being goal-directed. Therefore, humans will be able to interact with service robots intuitively in various domains such as education, healthcare, public service, and entertainment.
随着技术的进步，类人机器人等人工智能将很快成为我们日常生活的一部分。为了安全和直观的协作，了解它们运动动作背后的目标是很重要的。在人类中，这个过程是通过前额顶叶大脑区域的活动变化来介导的。当观察人工智能时，这些区域的激活程度表明了交互的自然性和容易程度。先前的研究表明，前额顶叶活动不取决于代理是人类还是人工智能。然而，目前还不清楚这种活动是否会根据观察到的人工智能执行的抓取（自我相关动作）和指向动作（他人相关动作）以及动作目标而被调节。因此，我们设计了一个实验，让被试观察人类和人工智能代理执行指向和抓取动作，这些动作针对两个不同的物体类别，暗示着不同的目标。我们发现，当工具和食物被两个代理指向或抓取时，双侧顶下小叶和运动前皮质的信号增加，这可能反映了手部动作与工具的功能使用之间的关联。我们的研究结果表明，目标归因不仅会激活额顶叶网络，以观察人类，也会激活社会动作和自我相关动作的机器人代理。实验后的汇报表明，类人机器人的动作可以被感知为有目标导向的。因此，人类将能够在教育、医疗保健、公共服务和娱乐等各个领域与服务机器人进行直观的互动。
