A Research Platform for Multi-Robot Dialogue with Humans

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile research platform enabling spoken dialogue interactions with multiple robots, integrating speech recognition, dialogue management, and inter-agent communication for coordinated multi-robot tasks.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-robot dialogue platform that combines existing speech and dialogue tools with a new inter-agent communication protocol for task coordination.

Findings

Demonstrated multi-robot interaction with verbal commands

Implemented a flexible platform compatible with existing speech tools

Showcased coordinated tasks between ground and aerial robots

Abstract

This paper presents a research platform that supports spoken dialogue interaction with multiple robots. The demonstration showcases our crafted MultiBot testing scenario in which users can verbally issue search, navigate, and follow instructions to two robotic teammates: a simulated ground robot and an aerial robot. This flexible language and robotic platform takes advantage of existing tools for speech recognition and dialogue management that are compatible with new domains, and implements an inter-agent communication protocol (tactical behavior specification), where verbal instructions are encoded for tasks assigned to the appropriate robot.