Elements of a spoken language programming interface for robots

Abstract

In many settings, such as home care or mobile environments, demands on users' attention, or users' anticipated level of formal training, or other on-site conditions will make standard keyboard-and monitor-based robot programming interfaces impractical. In such cases, a spoken language interface may be preferable. However, the open-ended task of programming a machine is very different from the sort of closed-vocabulary, data-rich applications (e.g. call routing) for which most speaker-independent spoken language interfaces are designed. This paper will describe some of the challenges of designing a spoken language programming interface for robots, and will present an approach that uses these semantic-level resources as extensively as possible in order to address these challenges.