Elements of a spoken language programming interface for robots

In many settings, such as home care or mobile environments, demands on users´ attention, or users´ anticipated level of formal training, or other on-site conditions will make standard keyboard-and monitor-based robot programming interfaces impractical. In such cases, a spoken language interface may be preferable. However, the open-ended task of programming a machine is very different from the sort of closed-vocabulary, data-rich applications (e.g. call routing) for which most speaker-independent spoken language interfaces are designed. This paper will describe some of the challenges of designing a spoken language programming interface for robots, and will present an approach that uses these semantic-level resources as extensively as possible in order to address these challenges.