Human-robot-interface for intelligent service robot assistance

Information exchange requirements between a human operator and a semi-autonomous service robot operating in a remote environment are discussed in this paper. The resulting human-robot-interface (MRI) allows specification of various types of robot commands by use of an advanced system for natural spoken user-independent speech understanding and flexible command generation. Visual screen-based monitoring and support of complex operations is achieved by means of an animated 3D environmental model augmented by the image of an onboard CCD camera. Typical features of the MRI are demonstrated through experiments performed with the service robot ROMAN.