The capability of collaboration is critical in the design of symbiotic cognitive systems. To obtain this functional capability, a cognitive system should possess evaluative and communicative processes. Emotions and their underlying processes provide such functions in social and collaborative environments. We investigate the mutual influence of affective and collaboration processes in a cognitive theory to support the interaction between humans and robots or virtual agents. We have developed new algorithms for these processes, as well as a new overall computational model for implementing collaborative robots and agents. We build primarily on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotions and the SharedPlans theory of collaboration to investigate the structure, fundamental processes and functions of emotions in a collaboration context.

We summarize our past, present and future research related to human-robot dialogue, starting with its foundations in collaborative discourse theory, continuing to our current research on recognizing and generating engagement, and concluding with an outline of new work we are beginning on the modeling of long-term relationships between humans and robots.

Demonstration materials can take the research and industry presentations, project demonstrations, (Path planning, animation / camera control, tactical / strategic form of a recorded demonstration session, an executable version interactive poster sessions, and product exhibits.

DiamondHelp is a generic collaborative task guidance system motivated by the current usability crisis in high-tech home products. It combines an application-independent conversational interface (adapted from online chat programs) with an application-specific direct-manipulation interface. DiamondHelp is implemented in Java and uses Collagen for representing and using task models.

We describe an approach to intelligent user interfaces, based on the idea of making the computer a collaborator, and an application-independent technology for implementing such interfaces.