Voice recognition and processing interface for an interactive guide robot in an university scenario

Abstract

This paper presents a voice user interface consisting of several modules for a mobile service robot, which is used to guide people and provide information on a university campus. The recognition and processing system is based on cloud services to convert from speech to text and vice versa and a dialogue system to allow for natural interaction. An approach to combine these modules with a data management system for meal plan, public transit, and location information is presented. We evaluate the system in different environments, each with their individual reverberation times, proving the functionality under conditions typical for the intended use case. In a user study with 13 participants we show the usability of the system, by letting the participants freely interact with the robot. In 86 % of all cases the desired output can be achieved at least once per user and request. A questionnare shows that most users agree with a good usability of the system.

Sobi: An Interactive Social Service Robot for Long-Term Autonomy in Open Environments

“…For intuitive accessibility, the human-robot interface therefore consists of speech processing as well as touch operation. Speech processing is based on a combination of Google's Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech services and the Natural Language Processing pipeline Dialogflow (see further information in [24]). All information can be accessed via both the speech and touch interfaces.…”

Sobi: An Interactive Social Service Robot for Long-Term Autonomy in Open Environments

“…For intuitive accessibility, the human-robot interface therefore consists of speech processing as well as touch operation. Speech processing is based on a combination of Google's Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech services and the Natural Language Processing pipeline Dialogflow (see further information in [25]). Since WiFi coverage is available throughout the robot's area of operation, the latencies of the speech processing pipeline are short enough to allow smooth interaction.…”

Map Management Approach for SLAM in Large-Scale Indoor and Outdoor Areas

“…The mobile robot used for evaluation is designed as an information and guiding service system for an university campus. The tasks are providing information about buildings, faculty members and events as well as a guiding visitors to appropriate locations [13]. Since the operational area of the robot includes large outdoor areas as well as indoor areas of several buildings with multiple floors, an eligible multi-map management algorithm 1 has to be implemented and validated with respect to efficient long-term and large-scale operation capabilities.…”