“As humans, we constantly incorporate other peoples' current actions as clues (cues) as to what they may do in the future,” Sanjay Joshi of the University of California, Davis, told PhysOrg.com. “For instance, we have a ‘sixth sense’ on the highway to know that a certain car will swerve into our lane soon, based on the driver's current driving patterns. Then, we may become more defensive in our own driving. In our work, we wanted to begin the process of allowing robots to use behavioral cues (of humans or other robots), to make the robot's mission more reliable and accurate. In social work environments populated by numerous people and robots, these types of cues should be abundant.”
The researchers explained that behavioral cues that robots might use could include any action or signal that the leader exhibits that hints at a future action. These might be intended behaviors, such as pointing or waving. Other cues might be unconscious, such as behaviors that indicate stress or sadness,

since they may indicate generally quick or slow movement patterns. Also, studies on human walking have shown that people unconsciously turn their head up to 25 degrees about 200 milliseconds before turning.