I Would Like Some Food: Anchoring Objects to Semantic Web Information in Human-Robot Dialogue Interactions

Ubiquitous robotic systems present a number of interesting application areas for socially assistive robots that aim to improve quality of life. In particular the combination of smart home environments and relatively inexpensive robots can be a viable technological solutions for assisting elderly and persons with disability in their own home. Such services require an easy interface like spoken dialogue and the ability to refer to physical objects using semantic terms. This paper presents an implemented system combining a robot and a sensor network deployed in a test apartment in an elderly residence area. The paper focuses on the creation and maintenance (anchoring) of the connection between the semantic information present in the dialogue with perceived physical objects in the home. Semantic knowledge about concepts and their correlations are retrieved from on-line resources and ontologies, e.g. WordNet, and sensor information is provided by cameras distributed in the apartment.