Towards Visual Dialogue for Human-Robot Interaction

The goal of the EU H2020-ICT funded SPRING project is to develop a socially pertinent robot to carry out tasks in a gerontological healthcare unit. In this context, being able to perceive its environment and have coherent and relevant conversations about the surrounding world is critical. In this paper, we describe current progress towards developing the necessary integrated visual and conversational capabilities for a robot to operate in such environments. Concretely, we introduce an architecture for conversing about objects and other entities present in an environment. The work described in this paper has applications that extend well beyond healthcare and can be used on any robot that requires to interact with its visual and spatial environment in order to be able to perform its duties.