Robot Interaction Language
Encyclopedia
The Robot Interaction Language (ROILA) is the first spoken language created specifically for talking to robots. ROILA is being developed by the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology
. The major goals of ROILA are that it should be easily learnable by the user, and optimized for efficient recognition by robots. ROILA has a syntax that allows it to be useful for many different kinds of robots, including the Roomba
, and Lego Mindstorms NXT
. ROILA is free for anybody to use and to contribute to, as the team has released all documentation and tools under a Creative Commons
license.
that would generate an artificial vocabulary in a way that would be easy for a human to pronounce. The algorithm used the most common phonemes from the most popular natural languages and created easy to pronounce words. The team took the results of this algorithm and formed the ROILA vocabulary.
. The words from Basic English that are used the most frequently are assigned to the shortest ROILA words generated by the algorithm. A short list of words in ROILA is included below, along with their English meaning.
speech recognition library to interpret spoken commands to the NXT, and transform them into ROILA commands.
Eindhoven University of Technology
The ' is a university of technology located in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The motto of the university is: Mens agitat molem . The university was the second of its kind in the Netherlands, only Delft University of Technology existed previously. Until mid-1980 it was known as the...
. The major goals of ROILA are that it should be easily learnable by the user, and optimized for efficient recognition by robots. ROILA has a syntax that allows it to be useful for many different kinds of robots, including the Roomba
Roomba
The Roomba is a series of autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners sold by iRobot. Under normal operating conditions, it is able to navigate a living space and common obstacles while vacuuming the floor...
, and Lego Mindstorms NXT
Lego Mindstorms NXT
Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit released by Lego in late July 2006.It replaced the first-generation Lego Mindstorms kit, which was called the Robotics Invention System. The base kit ships in two versions: the Retail Version and the Education Base Set . It comes with the NXT-G...
. ROILA is free for anybody to use and to contribute to, as the team has released all documentation and tools under a Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
license.
History
ROILA was developed due to the need for a unified language for humans to speak to robots. The designers performed research into the ability of robots to recognize and interpret natural languages. They discovered that natural languages can be very confusing for robots to interpret sometimes, due to elements such as homophones and tenses. Based on this research, the team set out to create a genetic algorithmGenetic algorithm
A genetic algorithm is a search heuristic that mimics the process of natural evolution. This heuristic is routinely used to generate useful solutions to optimization and search problems...
that would generate an artificial vocabulary in a way that would be easy for a human to pronounce. The algorithm used the most common phonemes from the most popular natural languages and created easy to pronounce words. The team took the results of this algorithm and formed the ROILA vocabulary.
Language
ROILA has an isolating grammar, meaning that it doesn't have suffixes or prefixes added to words to change their meanings. Instead, these changes are constructed by adding word markers that specify what the changes are, such as the tense of the previous verb. For example, in English the suffix “ed” is added to a word to show that it is in the past tense, but in ROILA the marker word “jifi” is placed after the verb.Alphabet
| Letter | IPA transcription | Arpabet Arpabet Arpabet is a phonetic transcription code developed by Advanced Research Projects Agency as a part of their Speech Understanding Project . It represents each phoneme of General American English with a distinct sequence of ASCII characters. Arpabet has been used in several speech synthesizers, like... transcription | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | æ | AE | fast |
| e | ɛ | EH | red |
| i | ɪ | IH | big |
| o | ɔ | AO | frost |
| u | ʌ | AH | but |
| b | b | B | buy |
| f | f | F | for |
| j | dʒ | JH | just |
| k | k | K | key |
| l | l | L | late |
| m | m | M | man |
| n | n | N | no |
| p | p | P | pay |
| s | s | S | say |
| t | t | T | take |
| w | w | W | way |
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of ROILA was generated by an algorithm designed to create a vocabulary with the least confusion amongst words. Each word generated by this algorithm was assigned a basic meaning, as taken from Basic EnglishBasic English
Basic English, also known as Simple English, is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language...
. The words from Basic English that are used the most frequently are assigned to the shortest ROILA words generated by the algorithm. A short list of words in ROILA is included below, along with their English meaning.
| English Meaning | ROILA Word |
|---|---|
| air | wifawe |
| and | sowu |
| bad | topik |
| can | leto |
| cold | bosipu |
| end | pekot |
| fire | nejoj |
| give | bufo |
| hand | jiwos |
| inside | pawop |
| know | bati |
| left | webufo |
| man | losa |
| number | felit |
| outside | bajike |
| paper | banafu |
| right | besati |
| stay | tipet |
| talk | seni |
| use | seput |
| very, also the word marker for the plural grammatical numbering | tuji |
| walk | fosit |
| word marker for future tense | jifo |
| word marker for past tense | jifi |
| you | bama |
Grammar
ROILA was designed to have a regular grammar, with no exceptions to anything. All rules apply to all words in a part of speech. Due to the simple isolating type grammar of ROILA whole word markers are added following parts of speech to show the grammatical category. For example, a word marker placed after a verb type would apply a tense, while a word marker applied after a noun type would apply plurality. ROILA has five parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and pronouns. The only pronouns are I, you, he, and she. Sentences follow a subject–verb–object word order.Examples
The following examples attempt to show what the syntax of the language looks like in various uses.- Literal English: I love this fruit
- ROILA: Pito loki wikute
- Translation: I love fruit
- Literal English: I love all fruits
- ROILA: Pito loki wikute tuji
- Translation: I love fruit
- Literal English: You are a good person
- ROILA: Bama wopa tiwil
- Translation: You good person
- Literal English: I walked to the house
- ROILA: Pito fosit jifi bubas
- Translation: I walk
house
- Literal English: Do not listen to her
- ROILA: Buse lulaw mona
- Translation: No listen her
Availability
ROILA is currently only available for the Lego NXT. It uses the CMU SphinxCMU Sphinx
CMU Sphinx, also called Sphinx in short, is the general term to describe a group of speech recognition systems developed at Carnegie Mellon University...
speech recognition library to interpret spoken commands to the NXT, and transform them into ROILA commands.