Driving robots through natural language

Abstract

Concerns a robot control system in which a high-level deductive engine generates an overall plan and dynamically consults low-level, distributed robotics programs which interface dynamically with the robot's actions and related information. We examine the particular problems of representing natural language in the context of a robots' world, and we present a concise logic system specifically designed to convey imperative sentences transmitted to a robot. This logic system is called CL or Command Language. We present as well an analyser which translates an English command into a CL formula. It is to be noted that CL serves not only as the internal representation language of a spoken or written command but is also the language in which a goal is directly expressed to the robot's high-level planner. In other words, the CL formula resulting from the analysis of a natural language command analysis is directly passed on to the planner as the goal to be attained. Details of the planner component of the approach are given.