Robots that Talk and Listen

Bilge Mutlu, Sean Andrist, and Allison Sauppé

Enabling human-robot dialogue

I Introduction

Since their inception, robots have been envisioned as autonomous agents that play key roles, including entertainers, teachers, coaches, assistants, and collaborators –roles that humans themselves play in society. These roles require robots to interact with their users in ways that people communicate with each other by drawing on the rich space of cues available to humans in verbal and nonverbal communication. Robots are also expected to listen to and observe their users while building the internal representations required for engaging in an effective dialogue within the context of a given interaction.

This exciting vision, however, is far ahead of what ...