Analyzing human decision making process with intention estimation using cooperative pattern task

Realizing flexible cooperative group behavior of human and social robots or agents needs a mutual understanding of each intention or behaviors of participants. To understand cooperative intelligence in group behavior, we must clarify the decision-making process with intention estimation in multiple persons. Multi-people decision-making process have top-down intention sharing and bottom-up decision making based on the intention inference and amendment based on the each participants’ behavior. This study suggests the cooperative pattern task focusing on the selection process of others whom to be noticed and balancing process of each intention to achieve the shared purpose. In the 2D grid world of an abstract cooperative environment with restricted modal-ity of subjects, they communicate with each other in a nonverbal way and infer their intention based on their behavior to achieve the purpose. We analyzed the human subjects’ behavior and clarified their policy of behavior and concepts which assumed to be shared by each subject for preventing misunderstanding of each intention. Two main results were obtained through the experiment. First, optimal behavior based on the purpose in minimal steps prevent the misunderstanding of each intention. Second, the narrowing down the number of subjects who change their policy assumed to reduce the burden of intention inference.