Effective spoken interfaces to service robots: Open problems

This paper discusses some of the open problems in spoken man-machine interfaces that were highlighted during the development of a human-robot interaction (HRI) system enabling humans to give route instruction to a robot. i) Naïve users only know how to explain tasks to other humans, using task decomposition consistent with human execution capabilities. Robots able to understand such instructions need similar (high-level) execution capabilities. Consequently, the current lack of knowledge in some areas of artificial perception, motor control, etc. is a limiting factor in HRI and in the development of service robot applications. ii) Human language is full of inaccuracies and errors, yet communication is effective because of the use of error-repair strategies. Future HRI systems may need human-like repair mechanisms. iii) At the sensory level, the inability to deal with noisy environments limits the range of possible applications. It is suggested that the analysis, not of the user's needs, but of the user's ways of expressing these needs should drive research in robotics and HRI.