Conversational Agents for Intelligent Environments

Professor Claude Sammut
ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems
School of Computer Science and Engineering
University of New South Wales

Tuesday 14th July 2009 at 11am

Abstract

For several years, we have been developing scripting languages for building conversational agents. Over time, these languages have evolved to include middleware that allows the conversational agent to interface with devices embedded in the environment, for example, audio- visual equipment, lights, cameras, microphones and other computers, including mobile ones, i.e. robots. In this talk , we will discuss some of the issues in designing this set of software. This includes questions of appropriate language constructs to support conversational context, representation and reasoning with background knowledge and requirements for interacting with external devices. We will also discuss problems of grounding language for use in robots.

Short resume

Claude Sammut is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Research Group. He is the UNSW node Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems and a member of the joint ARC/NH&MRC project on Thinking Systems.

His early work on relational learning helped to the lay the foundations for the field of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP). With Donald Michie, he also did pioneering work in Behavioural Cloning. His current interests include Conversational Agents and Robotics. He was the leader of the UNSW teams that won RoboCup four-legged robot competitions in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

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