Using Natural Language And Voice To Control High Level Tasks In A Robotics Environment

Abstract

RCA's Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) has implemented an integrated system which permits control of high level tasks in a robotics environment through voice input in the form of natural language syntax. The paper to be presented will outline the architecture used to integrate voice recognition and synthesis hardware and natural language and intelligent reasoning software with a supervisory processor that controls robotic and vision operations in the robotic testbed. The application is intended to give the human operator of a Puma 782 industrial robot the ability to combine joystick teleoperation with voice input in order to provide a flexible man-machine interface in a hands-busy environment. The system is designed to give the operator a speech interface which is unobtrusive and undemanding in terms of predetermined syntax requirements. The voice recognizer accepts continuous speech and the natural language processor accepts full and partial sentence fragments and can perform a fair amount of disambiguation and context analysis. Output to the operator comes via the parallel channel of speech synthesis so that the operator does not have to consult the computer's CRT for messages. The messages are generated from the software and offer warnings about unacceptable situations, confirmations of actions completed, and feedback of system data.