<title>Autonomous navigation and speech in the mobile robot of MAIA</title>

Abstract

MAIA (acronym for Modello Avanzato di Intelligenza Artificiale) is a project aimed at the integration of several AI resources being presently developed at IRST. The overall approach to the design of intelligent artificial systems that MAIA proposes is experimental not less than theoretical, and an experimental setup (that we call the experimental platform) has consequently been defined in which a variety of mutually interacting functionalities can be tested in a common framework. The experimental platform of MAIA consists of 'brains' and 'tentacles', and it is to one of such tentacles--the Mobile Robot--that the present paper is devoted to. At present, the mobile robot is equipped with two main modules: the Navigation Module, which gives the robot the capability of moving autonomously in an indoor environment, and the Speech Module, which allows the robot to communicate with humans by voice. Here the overall architecture of the system is described in detail and potentialities arising from the combined use of speech and navigation are considered.