Project directory

Tuesday

Dialogue Man-Robot

The project Tuesday must allow a step ahead qualitative in the robustness, flexibility, the effectiveness and the naturalness of the systems of dialogue by the means of new approaches which one will describe as located, anchoring the interaction in reality by the means of robotics. The place (or even the precise place) where the dialogue is carried out, moment, the posture of the “interlocutors” (the man and the robot), the task in progress constitute the context, evolutionary, that it is necessary to apprehend and on which it will be necessary to act to carry out the dialogue under good conditions. Nevertheless, that poses new problems in the case of absent purely vocal systems of dialogue. The interpretation of the situation on the one hand, necessary to the dialogue, includes, for a robot which shares space with the man, an apprehension of the field of view, obstacles, “affordances” of the man in a situation (and initially those related on the visibility and accessibility). Indeed, an essential component of the interpretation of interactive situations is the “catch of prospect”. This one has been studied relatively little and, only for a few years, within the framework of the interaction man-robot. Moreover, strong simplifying assumptions are often taken, which harm our opinion with the quality of the interaction. We wish to take up the challenge, within the framework of this project, of an interaction enriched by an analysis by advanced situation (as near as possible to the interaction man-man) and a synthesis by relevant expressive behaviors. The challenge being, of course, generics of the approaches of analysis of situation and synthesis of placements, postures and movements. The humanoid form for a robot is particularly favourable but poses also complementary problems related on a large number of degrees of freedom and the constraints of stability. Central element of the project, the architecture of the system of dialogue will have to allow a taking into account of uncertainty throughout the process and to make use of the context (more or less rich according to the platform).