Talking with a robot in English

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the present status and future plans of a research project aimed at communicating in natural language with an intelligent automaton. The automaton in question is a computer-controlled mobile robot capable of autonomously acquiring information about its environment and performing tasks normally requiring human supervision. By natural language communication is meant the ability of a human to successfully engage the robot in a dialog using simple English declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences. Communication is accomplished by means of a natural language interpretive question-answering system (ENGROB) consisting of six distinct components: a syntax analyser, a semantic interpreter, a model of the robot's environment, a deductive, automatic theorem proving system, an English output generator, and a repertoire of basic robot capabilities for sensing and manipulating the environment. An example is given that illustrates the type of processing done by each component, and the nature of component interactions.