The acquisition of word semantics by a humanoid robot via interaction with a human tutor

Saunders, Joe; Nehaniv, Chrystopher L.; Lyon, Caroline

doi:10.1075/ais.2.13sau

Cited by 8 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…We will therefore frequently refer to the latter as rejection experiment and will use it as comparative "benchmark". Both negation experiments crucially involve affect or motivation, and both build up on "non-affective" work on robotic language acquisition conducted by Saunders et al [38][39][40]. The experimental setup of both negation experiments and the work of Saunders et al are similar to such a degree that they allow us to conduct comparisons between participants' speech between these experiments.…”

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the methodological level, and given that our experiments crucially involve dyads consisting of humans and a small humanoid robot, the work falls into the area of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). In no less important ways it builds up upon recent research on symbol grounding in developmental and cognitive robotics [7,34,35,39,40]. We adopt a constructive, or synthetic, approach to cognitive science that has been termed 'cognitive developmental robotics' elsewhere [2].…”

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The auditory system encompasses speech recognition, word alignment, prosodic labeling, and word extraction, and are based on Saunders' system [40]. Utterance boundaries are set based on statistics of inter-word pause durations and word durations (see Saunders et al [40] for details). Important for the later analysis is the notion of prosodic saliency.…”

Section: Behavioral Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Robots Learning to Say “No”

Förster

Saunders

Lehmann

et al. 2019

J. Hum.-Robot Interact.

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"No" is one of the first ten words used by children and embodies the first form of linguistic negation. Despite its early occurrence, the details of its acquisition remain largely unknown. The circumstance that "no" cannot be construed as a label for perceptible objects or events puts it outside the scope of most modern accounts of language acquisition. Moreover, most symbol grounding architectures will struggle to ground the word due to its non-referential character. The presented work extends symbol grounding to encompass affect and motivation. In a study involving the childlike robot iCub, we attempt to illuminate the acquisition process of negation words. The robot is deployed in speech-wise unconstrained interaction with participants acting as its language teachers. The results corroborate the hypothesis that affect or volition plays a pivotal role in the acquisition process. Negation words are prosodically salient within prohibitive utterances and negative intent interpretations such that they can be easily isolated from the teacher's speech signal. These words subsequently may be grounded in negative affective states. However, observations of the nature of prohibition and the temporal relationships between its linguistic and extra-linguistic components raise questions over the suitability of Hebbian-type algorithms for certain types of language grounding.

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Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Behavioral Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Robots Learning to Say “No”

Förster

Saunders

Lehmann

et al. 2019

J. Hum.-Robot Interact.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The ROSSUM architecture empirically models the learning of word meanings though social interaction. Heuristics based on the characteristics of motherese allow a robot to make associations between words and features of its environment or its own embodiment through interaction with a human teacher (Saunders, Nehaniv & Lyon, 2011). Motherese is a term for a style of speaking typically employed by caregivers when talking with a child (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987).…”

Section: Seven To Twelve Monthsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ITALK Project: A Developmental Robotics Approach to the Study of Individual, Social, and Linguistic Learning

Broz¹,

Nehaniv²,

Belpaeme³

et al. 2014

Topics in Cognitive Science

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This article presents results from a multidisciplinary research project on the integration and transfer of language knowledge into robots as an empirical paradigm for the study of language development in both humans and humanoid robots. Within the framework of human linguistic and cognitive development, we focus on how three central types of learning interact and co-develop: individual learning about one's own embodiment and the environment, social learning (learning from others), and learning of linguistic capability. Our primary concern is how these capabilities can scaffold each other's development in a continuous feedback cycle as their interactions yield increasingly sophisticated competencies in the agent's capacity to interact with others and manipulate its world. Experimental results are summarized in relation to milestones in human linguistic and cognitive development and show that the mutual scaffolding of social learning, individual learning, and linguistic capabilities creates the context, conditions, and requisites for learning in each domain. Challenges and insights identified as a result of this research program are discussed with regard to possible and actual contributions to cognitive science and language ontogeny. In conclusion, directions for future work are suggested that continue to develop this approach toward an integrated framework for understanding these mutually scaffolding processes as a basis for language development in humans and robots.

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“…Vision can often not be disassociated from other perceptual modes and the need to integrate them has underscored much recent work in robotics. For example, in work on language acquisition through interaction between humans and a humanoid robot an acoustic sound stream, visual percepts and proprioceptive information have to be integrated [30]. See Figure 1.…”

Section: The Need To Integrate Multiple Modes Of Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Vision: Extending the Scope of a Sensorimotor Account of Perception

Lyon

2014

Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics

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Abstract. We examine the scope of some sensorimotor accounts of perception, and their application in developmental robotics. Current interest in sensorimotor theories, and the enactive paradigm, was stimulated by the seminal book The Embodied Mind by Varela, Thompson and Rosch (1991) [32]. However, both in this initial book and subsequently there has been much work on visual perception and less attention to other perceptual modalities. We suggest that the insights gained from an exploration of the visual domain need supplementing, and in some respects qualifying: some significant characteristics of vision do not hold for audition, in particular for the perception of speech. This leads into a discussion of the importance of integrating different perceptual modes, with particular reference to robots and human-robot interaction. We examine the effect of including audition in accounts of perception, and suggest that it makes sense to avoid the unnecessary straight jacket of a model based primarily on vision and touch alone. The sensorimotor approach can be extended to other perceptual modes.

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The acquisition of word semantics by a humanoid robot via interaction with a human tutor

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Robots Learning to Say “No”

Robots Learning to Say “No”

The ITALK Project: A Developmental Robotics Approach to the Study of Individual, Social, and Linguistic Learning

Beyond Vision: Extending the Scope of a Sensorimotor Account of Perception

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