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February, 2019
Robot Interacts with Humans through Vision and Language
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ate safely in the presence of people, encourage them to provide directions and use that information to find the goal.”
Doctoral candidates Thomas
Ilyevsky and Jared Johansen are working with Siskind to develop a ro- bot, named Hosh, that can integrate graphic and language data into its navigational process, in order to lo- cate a specific place or person. The team is developing the robot through a grant funded by the National Sci- ence Foundation’s National Robotics Initiative. This robot could help self-driv-
ing cars communicate with passen- gers and pedestrians or complete small-scale tasks in a work environ- ment, such as deliver mail. The tech- nology is timely, as Boston Consult- ing Group has projected that the con- sumer robotics industry will reach $14 billion by 2025.
Knowledge Development The researchers are developing
high-level software to give the robot “common sense knowledge.” This is the ability to understand objects and environments with human-level in- tuition, enabling it to recognize navi- gational conventions. The robot will incorporate both spoken statements and physical gestures into its naviga- tion process. “This is where common sense
knowledge comes in. The robot should know that odd and even num- bered rooms sit across from each oth- er in a hallway or that Room 317 should be on the building’s third floor,” says Ilyevsky. To develop that knowledge, the
researchers are creating integrative natural language processing and computer vision software. Typically, natural language processing will en- able the robot to communicate with people, while the computer vision software will enable the robot to nav- igate its environment. However, the researchers are advancing the soft- ware to inform each other as the ro- bot moves. “The robot needs to understand
language in a visual context and vi- sion in a language context,” Siskind says. “For example, while locating a specific person, the robot might re- ceive information in a comment or physical gesture and must under- stand both within the context of its navigational goals.” For instance, if the response is
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“Check for that person in Room 300,” the robot will need to process the statement in a visual context and identify what room it is currently in, as well as the best route to reach Room 300. If the response is “That person is over there” with a physical cue, the robot will need to integrate the visual cue with the statement’s meaning in order to identify Person A. “Interacting with humans is an
unsolved problem in artificial intelli- gence,” Johansen says. “For this proj- ect, we are trying to help the robot to understand certain conventions it might run into or to anticipate that a dozen different responses could all have the same meaning.” “We expect this technology to be
really big, because the industry of autonomous robots and self-driving cars is becoming very big,” Siskind
See at ATX/MD&M West, Booth 844
says. “The technology could be adapt- ed into self-driving cars, allowing the cars to ask for directions or passen- gers to request a specific destination,
The robot is designed to navigate environments and interact with humans.
just like human drivers do.” The researchers expect to send
the robot on autonomous missions with growing complexity as the tech- nology progresses. First, the robot will learn to navigate indoors on a single floor. Then, to move to other floors and buildings, it will ask peo- ple to operate the elevator or open doors for it. The researchers hope to progress to outdoor missions in the spring.
The Purdue Office of Technolo-
gy Commercialization has filed a pro- visional patent for the autonomous robot, and the technology is available for licensing to a company or startup through this office. Web:
www.prf.org r
Programming Light on a Chip
Cambridge, MA — Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new inte- grated photonics platform that can store light and electrically control its frequency (or color) in an integrated circuit.
The platform draws inspiration
from atomic systems and could have a wide range of applications, includ- ing photonic quantum information processing, optical signal processing and microwave photonics. “This is the first time that mi-
crowaves have been used to shift the frequency of light in a programmable manner on a chip,” says Mian Zhang, a former postdoctoral fellow in applied physics at SEAS, now CEO of Har- vard-spawned startup HyperLight Corporation. “Many quantum photon- ic and classical optics applications re- quire shifting of optical frequencies, which has been difficult. We show that not only can we change the frequency in a controllable manner, but using this new ability we can also store and retrieve light on demand, which has not been possible before.” The research was published in
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