Robots That Use Language

Thumbnail Image

Files

annurev-control-101119-071628.pdf (1.72 MB)

Links to Files

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-control-101119-071628

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-control-101119-071628
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/19469

Collections

UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department
UMBC Faculty Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2020-01-31

Type of Work

journal articles
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Stefanie Tellex et al., Robots That Use Language, Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems, Vol. 3:25-55 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-control-101119-071628

Rights

This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
© 2020 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

Subjects

Abstract

This article surveys the use of natural language in robotics from a robotics point of view. To use human language, robots must map words to aspects of the physical world, mediated by the robot's sensors and actuators. This problem differs from other natural language processing domains due to the need to ground the language to noisy percepts and physical actions. Here, we describe central aspects of language use by robots, including understanding natural language requests, using language to drive learning about the physical world, and engaging in collaborative dialogue with a human partner. We describe common approaches, roughly divided into learning methods, logic-based methods, and methods that focus on questions of human–robot interaction. Finally, we describe several application domains for language-using robots.