To Örebro University

In this work we introduce symbolic knowledge representation and reasoning capabilities to enrich perceptual anchoring. The idea that encompasses perceptual anchoring is the creation and maintenance of a connection between the symbolic and perceptual description that refer to the same object in the environment. In this work we further extend the symbolic layer by combining a knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) system with the anchoring module to exploit a knowledge inference mechanisms. We implemented a prototype of this novel approach to explore through initial experimentation the advantages of integrating a symbolic knowledge system to the anchoring framework in the context of an intelligent home. Our results show that using the KRR we are better able to cope with ambiguities in the anchoring module through exploitation of human robot interaction.

In this work we report results on the use of symbolic knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) for perceptual anchoring. Anchoring is the creation and maintenance of a connection between the symbolic and perceptual description that refer to the same physical object in the environment. We extend the anchoring framework to manage the symbolic information in a KRR system, and to exploit this knowledge and the inference mechanism to recover from failures in the anchoring of symbols. We show a simulated scenario where the system communicates with a user to interactively resolve an ambiguous description using the knowledge base, and in particular spatial relations. This is a first step towards a KRR-supported anchoring framework that we will use for human-robot communication.

In this work we show how a mobile robot can use spatial information of objects to improve communication with humans and other devices located in an intelligent environment. In particular, this work focuses on using spatial relations to facilitate the creation of a connection between symbolic and perceptual representation that refer to the same physical object (anchoring). We extend an anchoring framework to include a set of binary spatial relations which can then be used to exchange information about objects with a human user. To illustrate the performance of the framework, a number of scenarios are presented using a mobile robot. These scenarios are a first step towards the goal of having mobile robots integrated in an intelligent environment and communicating with human users.