Talking with Robots: Opportunities and Challenges

TL;DR

This paper discusses the current state, challenges, and opportunities in speech-based human-robot interaction, emphasizing the need for more natural dialogue systems to bridge the gap between robotic and human communication.

Contribution

It highlights the challenges in integrating spoken language technology with robotics and proposes that grounded, situated speech interactions can improve human-robot communication.

Findings

Current dialogue systems are too formulaic for natural interaction

Grounded speech can provide deeper pragmatic insights

Addressing these challenges can enhance robot 'habitability'

Abstract

Notwithstanding the tremendous progress that is taking place in spoken language technology, effective speech-based human-robot interaction still raises a number of important challenges. Not only do the fields of robotics and spoken language technology present their own special problems, but their combination raises an additional set of issues. In particular, there is a large gap between the formulaic speech that typifies contemporary spoken dialogue systems and the flexible nature of human-human conversation. It is pointed out that grounded and situated speech-based human-robot interaction may lead to deeper insights into the pragmatics of language usage, thereby overcoming the current `habitability gap'.