Artificial mental imagery in cognitive robots interaction

Cognitive Robotics is a new and effective approach for the modelling and better understanding of human cognitive functions and to create effective human-robot interaction. This article reviews the recent literature that exploit of the concept of mental imagery as a fundamental cognitive capability to enhance the robot's ability to interact with the physical and social environment. Then, three future interdisciplinary research directions are identified and discussed, highlighting the new collaborative research themes for the definition of a new class of imagery enabled robots that can overcome some limitation of the current technology, especially in its application in social contexts.