Telling Rolland Where to Go: HRI Dialogues on Route Navigation

Our aim is to enable uninformed users to instruct the Bremen autonomous wheelchair Rolland to move towards specific goals via route directions. Empirical data are used to augment the robot's internal representation as well as to identify a number of conceptual problem areas involved in the spatial communication between a human and a robot. The problematic aspects are tackled via the design of a dialogue system capable of managing the available information and asking appropriate clarification questions in order to ensure efficient communication.