Pro-active service robots in a health care framework: vocal interaction using natural language and prosody

This paper describes a service robotics application in a health care environment. Human-robot interaction is based on the integration of low level skills like acoustic localization of noise/voice sources with high level competencies like continuous speech recognition and prosody based dialogue. A multirobotic system is presented; its coordination is performed by a central supervision device which manages the vocal interaction with a number of human operators. A microphone array placed on the top of the robots is used both for near talker location and for auto-localization through acoustic beacons. Preliminary experimental results are discussed.