[CSEE Talk] talk: Talking to Robots, 1pm Mon 4/7, ITE325b

[Tim Finin]

           Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

              Talking to Robots: Learning to Ground
              Human Language in Robotic Perception

                        Cynthia Matuszek
                    University of Washington

           1:00pm Monday, 7 April 2014, ITE325b, UMBC

Advances in computation, sensing, and hardware are enabling
robots to perform an increasing variety of tasks in ever less
constrained settings. It is now possible to imagine robots that
can operate in traditionally human-centric settings. However,
such robots need the flexibility to take instructions and learn
about tasks from nonspecialists using language and other natural
modalities. At the same time, learning to process natural
language about the physical world is difficult without a robot’s
sensors and actuators. Combining these areas to create useful
robotic systems is a fundamentally multidisciplinary problem,
requiring advances in natural language processing, machine
learning, robotics, and human-robot interaction. In this talk, I
describe my work on learning natural language from end users in a
physical context; such language allows a person to communicate
their needs in a natural, unscripted way. I demonstrate that this
approach can enable a robot to follow directions, learn about
novel objects in the world, and perform simple tasks such as
navigating an unfamiliar map or putting away objects.

Cynthia Matuszek is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of
Washington Computer Science and Engineering department, where she
is a member of both the Robotics and State Estimation lab and the
Language, Interaction, and Learning group. She earned a B.S. in
Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, and
M.Sc. from the University of Washington. She is published in the
areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, ubiquitous computing,
and human-robot interaction.

Host: Tim Finin.

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