Spoken Dialogue and Human-Robot Interaction workshop

Spoken Dialogue and Human-Robot Interaction

Workshop at IEEE RoMan 2009
27 Sep-2 Oct 2009, Toyama, Japan

Call for papers now open, closes on 20 April 2009.

Introduction

The Spoken Dialogue and Human-Robot Interaction workshop will be held at the 18th IEEE International symposium on Robotics and Human Interactive Communication (RoMan 2009).

This full day workshop focuses on new developments in the use of spoken dialogue communication in human-robot interaction. Robots extend the typical domain of natural language processing in that they allow a multi-modal experience, which potentially improves performance of NLP methods, but especially allows for a rich embodied interaction between robots and people not only involving language, but drawing upon a wide range of other communicative modalities. Recent advances in using language-enabled robots also show that new challenges such as real-world settings, spoken communication, acoustic packaging, embodiment, incomplete sensor information and the integration with action require a new approach for which classic natural language processing and disembodied AI are not well-equipped. In addition, embodied language and perception offers unprecedented possibilities as a conduit to acquire conceptual knowledge or to adapt existing knowledge; giving the robot access to views and worlds unavailable to robots that are non language-sensitive. This workshop invites contributions reporting work in progress, algorithms, results and demonstrations.

Call for contributions

We invite papers on spoken dialogue and human-robot interaction for presentation during the workshop. Selection will be based on light-touch peer review. The workshop aims to offer a varied programme, with a balanced mix of reports on whole systems, new developments in the field and high-potential work-in-progress.

Topics include but are not limited to:

Human-robot interaction involving linguistic / spoken dialogue-based communication.
Robot-robot interaction involving linguistic communication.
Embodied multi-modal communication.
(Extended) symbol grounding.
Language as a conduit for supporting knowledge acquisition.
New challenges for linguistic communication in HRI.
Autonomous language and knowledge acquisition in robots.
Situated dialogue processing.
Non-verbal communication in dialogue.
Acoustic packaging.

Papers can be up to 8 pages and should be formatted according to the IEEE Ro-Man 2009 paper guidelines. Accepted papers will be published in the ROMAN 2009 Workshops and Tutorials proceedings and will be made available on CD.

The submission deadline for papers is 20 April 2009, deadline extended to 4 May 2009. Reviews and decisions will be sent out by 15 May 2009. Papers should be submitted to spoken.dialogue.and.hri@gmail.com

Programma

The workshop will be held on Monday 28 September 2009 at the Toyama convention centre.

9:00 - 9:10 Introduction

9:10 - 9:40 Bleys, J., Loetzsch, M., Spranger, M. and Steels, L. - The Grounded Colour Naming Game

9:40 - 10:10 de Greeff, J., Delaunay, F. and Belpaeme, T - Concept Acquisition through Linguistic Human-Robot Interaction

10:10 - 10:30 Break

10:30 - 11:10 Kruijff, G.J. - Abduction for clarification in situated dialogue

11:10 - 11:40 Mubin, O., Bartneck, C. and Feijs, L. - What you say is not what you get: Arguing for Artificial Languages Instead of Natural Languages in Human Robot Speech Interaction

11:40 - 12:20 Schillingmann, L., Wrede, B., Rohlfing, K., Fischer, K. and Sagerer, G. - The Structure of Robot-Directed Interaction compared to Adult- and Infant-Directed Interaction using a Model for Acoustic Packaging

12:30 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 16:00 Challenges in HRI and Spoken Dialogue: brainstorm session

Practical

Participants should register through the Ro-Man 2009 registration. Any enquiries are welcome at spoken.dialogue.and.hri@gmail.com

Organisers

Tony Belpaeme (University of Plymouth, UK) and Geert-Jan Kruijff (DFKI, Germany).