A computational model for a robotic arm instructed by natural language

An effort to develop a robotic system that can be instructed by a nonexpert user in an office environment using natural language is described. The central problem is the transformation of ordinary English utterances into unambiguous task structures that can be performed by a robot. The research reveals that a robotic system using natural language must include robot-level programming strategies if it is to be efficient. Moreover, to facilitate and enhance communication between a user and a robot, the robot-level programming language needs to be designed to reflect the way humans refer to actions, and to reflect temporal and logical relationships expressed in natural language. In place of a traditional point-to-point robot control scheme, a concurrent, perception-feedback-driven control strategy has been developed. An initial book handling experiment has been conducted in an officelike environment.<
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