Message Passing Framework for Vision Prediction Stability in Human Robot Interaction

Abstract

In Human Robot Interaction (HRI) scenarios, robot systems would benefit from an understanding of the user's state, actions and their effects on the environments to enable better interactions. While there are specialised vision algorithms for different perceptual channels, such as objects, scenes, human pose, and human actions, it is worth considering how their interaction can help improve each other's output. In computer vision, individual prediction modules for these perceptual channels frequently produce noisy outputs due to the limited datasets used for training and the compartmentalisation of the perceptual channels, often resulting in noisy or unstable prediction outcomes. To stabilise vision prediction results in HRI, this paper presents a novel message passing framework that uses the memory of individual modules to correct each other's outputs. The proposed framework is designed utilising common-sense rules of physics (such as the law of gravity) to reduce noise while introducing a pipeline that helps to effectively improve the output of each other's modules. The proposed framework aims to analyse primitive human activities such as grasping an object in a video captured from the perspective of a robot. Experimental results show that the proposed framework significantly reduces the output noise of individual modules compared to the case of running independently. This pipeline can be used to measure human reactions when interacting with a robot in various HRI scenarios.