Human-robot interaction through spoken language dialogue

The development of robots able to accept, via a friendly interface, instructions in terms of the concepts familiar to the human user remains a challenge. It is argued that designing and building such intelligent robots can be seen as the problem of integrating four main dimensions: human-robot communication, sensory motor skills and perception, decision-making capabilities and learning. Although these dimensions have been thoroughly studied in the past, their integration has seldom been attempted in a systematic way. It is further argued that, for the common user, the only sufficiently practical interface is spoken language. The “body and soul” of Carl, a robot currently under construction in our lab, are presented. The spoken language interface is given particular attention.