KANTRA human-machine interaction for intelligent robots using natural language

In this paper, a new natural language interface is presented that can be applied to make the use of intelligent robots more flexible. This interface was developed for the autonomous mobile two-arm robot KAMRO, which uses several camera systems to generate an environment model and to perform assembly tasks. A fundamental requirement in human-machine interaction for intelligent robots is the ability to refer to objects in the robot's environment. Hence, the interface and the intelligent system need similar environment models and it is necessary to provide current sensor information. Additional flexibility can be achieved by integrating the man-machine interface into the control architecture of the robot and to give it access to all internal information and to the models that the robot uses for an autonomous behaviour. In order to fully exploit the capabilities of a natural language access, we favour a dialogue-based approach, i.e., for the interface, KANTRA, presented here, the human-machine interaction is not restricted to unidirectional communication.