Abstract
A more natural interaction between humans and mobile robots can be achieved by bridging the gap between the format of spatial knowledge used by robots and the format of languages used by humans. This enables both sides to communicate by using shared knowledge. Spatial knowledge can be (re)presented in various ways to increase the interaction between humans and mobile robots. One effective way is to describe the route verbally to the robot. This method can permit computer language-naive users to instruct mobile robots, which understand spatial descriptions, to naturally perform complex tasks using succinct and intuitive commands. We present a spatial language to describe route-based navigation tasks for a mobile robot. The instructions of this spatial language are implemented to provide an intuitive interface with which novice users can easily and naturally describe a navigation task to a mobile robot in a miniature city or in any other indoor environment. In our system, the instructions of the processed route are analyzed to generate a symbolic representation via the instruction interpreter. The resulting symbolic representation is supplied to the robot motion planning stage as an initial path estimation of route description and it is also used to generate a topological map of the route’s environment.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bischoff, R., Jain, T.: Natural communication and interaction with humanoid robots. In: Second International Symposium on Humanoid Robots, Tokyo (1999)
Brennan, S.E.: The grounding problem in conversations with and through computers. In: Fussell, S.R., Kreuz, R.J. (eds.) Social and cognitive psychological approaches to interpersonal communication, pp. 201–225 (1991)
Cangelosi, A., Harnad, S.: The adaptive advantage of symbolic theft over sensorimotor toil: grounding language in perceptual categories. Evolution of Communication 4, 117–142 (2000)
Chella, A., Coradeschi, S., Frixione, M., Saffiotti, A.: Perceptual anchoring via conceptual spaces. In: Proceedings of the AAAI 2004 workshop on anchoring symbols to sensor data (2004)
Coradeschi, S., Saffiotti, A.: An introduction to the anchoring problem. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 43, 85–96 (2003)
Elmogy, M., Habel, C., Zhang, J.: Robot topological map generation from formal route instructions. In: Proceedings of the 6th international cognitive robotics workshop at 18th european conference on artificial intelligence (ECAI), Patras, Greece, pp. 60–67 (2008)
Elmogy, M., Habel, C., Zhang, J.: Spatial Language for Route-Based Humanoid Robot Navigation. In: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on spatial cognition (ICSC 2009), Roma, Italy (to be published)
Habel, C.: Incremental Generation of Multimodal Route Instructions. In: Natural language Generation in Spoken and Written dialogue, AAAI Spring Symposium 2003, Palo alto, CA, pp. 44–51 (2003)
Harnad, S.: The symbol grounding problem. Physica D. Nonlinear phenomena 42(1-3), 335–346 (1990)
Karlsson, L., Bouguerra, A., Broxvall, M., Coradeschi, S., Saffiotti, A.: To secure an anchor - a recovery planning approach to ambiguity in perceptual anchoring. AI Communications 21(1), 1–14 (2008)
Kiesler, S.: Fostering Common Ground in Human-robot Interaction. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (ROMAN), pp. 729–734 (2005)
Lauria, S., Bugmann, G., Kyriacou, T., Bos, J., Klein, E.: Training Personal Robots using Natural Language Instruction. IEEE Intelligent Systems 16, 38–45 (2001)
MacMahon, M.: Marco: A Modular Architecture for following Route Instructions. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Modular Construction of Human-like Intelligence, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 48–55 (2005)
Pires, G., Nunes, U.: A Wheelchair Steered Through Voice Commands and Assisted by a Reactive Fuzzy-logic Controller. Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems 34, 301–314 (2002)
Schulz, R., Stockwell, P., Wakabayashi, M., Wiles, J.: Towards a Spatial Language for Mobile Robots. In: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on the evolution of language, pp. 291–298 (2006)
Simpson, R.C., Levine, S.P.: Adaptive shared control of a smart wheelchair operated by voice control. In: Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS 1997), pp. 622–626 (1997)
Skubic, M., Perzanowski, D., Blisard, S., Schultz, A., Adams, W., Bugajska, M., Brock, D.: Spatial Language for Human-robot Dialogs. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews 34(2), 154–167 (2004)
Tellex, S., Roy, D.: Spatial Routines for a Simulated Speech-Controlled Vehicle. In: Proceedings of the 1st ACM sigchi/sigart conference on human-robot interaction, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, pp. 156–163 (2006)
Tellex, S., Roy, D.: Grounding Language in Spatial Routines. In: Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symp. on Control Mechanisms for Spatial Knowledge Processing in Cognitive / Intelligent Systems (2007)
Torrance, M.C.: Natural communication with mobile robots. MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (1994)
Tschander, L.B., Schmidtke, H., Habel, C., Eschenbach, C., Kulik, L.: A geometric agent following route instructions. In: Freksa, C., Brauer, W., Habel, C., Wender, K.F. (eds.) Spatial Cognition III. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2685, pp. 89–111. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Zavlangas, P.G., Tzafestas, S.G.: Integration of topological and metric maps for indoor mobile robot path planning and navigation. In: Vlahavas, I.P., Spyropoulos, C.D. (eds.) SETN 2002. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 2308, pp. 121–130. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Elmogy, M., Habel, C., Zhang, J. (2009). A Cognitively Motivated Route-Interface for Mobile Robot Navigation. In: Ritter, H., Sagerer, G., Dillmann, R., Buss, M. (eds) Human Centered Robot Systems. Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol 6. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10403-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10403-9_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10402-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10403-9
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)