Inspired by studies of interpersonal coordinations, we assumed that unintentional synchrony is a fundamental parameter to initiate and maintain Human Machine interactions. We developed, in our previous works, a neural model allowing a robot to synchronize its behavior depending on the human movement frequency, and thus to choose this interacting partner on the basis of synchrony detection between its own learned dynamics and the visual stimuli induced by the human motion. To confirm or deny our assumptions we present here a psychological study to measure unintentional synchronization during Unidirectional and Bidirectional Human Robot Interaction using our previously proposed model for initiating the interaction and focusing the robot attention on a selected partner. The experimental results demonstrated that bidirectional intuitive interaction leading to possible unintentional synchronization is primordial to obtain natural human robot interactions using a minimal cognitive load (unintentional behavior).

Future robots must co-exist and directly interact with human beings. Designing these agents imply solving hard problems linked to human-robot interaction tasks. For instance, how a robot can choose an interacting partner among various agents and how a robot locates regions of interest in its visual field. Studies of neurobiology and psychology collectively named synchrony as an indispensable parameter for social interaction. We assumed that Human-Robot interaction could be initiated by synchrony detection. In this paper, we present a developmental approach for analyzing unintentional synchronization in human-robot interaction. Using our neural network model, the robot learns from a babbling step its inner dynamics by associating its own motor activities (oscillators) with the visual stimulus induced by its own motion. After learning the robot is capable of choosing an interacting agent and of localizing the spatial position of its preferred partner by synchrony detection.

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