Proactive Robotic Assistance via Theory of Mind

Advanced social cognitive skills enhance the effectiveness of human-robot interactions. Research shows that an important precursor to the development of these abilities in humans is Theory of Mind (ToM) - the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others. In this work, we endow robots with ToM abilities and propose a ToM-based approach to proactive robotic assistance by appealing to epistemic planning techniques. Our evaluation shows that robots implementing our approach and demonstrating ToM are measurably more helpful and perceived by humans as more socially intelligent compared to robots with a deficit in ToM.