by David Geer
Contact the author at geercom@windstream.net
Lingodroids Form Their Own Language
to Name, Describe, and Share Places With
Each Other in a Useful Manner
Lingodroids research enables two robots to discover and map new locations,
name those locations with distinct ring tone sounds, and then share the
maps. Once an environment and all the locations or areas within it have been
named, one robot can tell another robot that has not been there how to get
there. The Lingodroids can travel to areas they have not been to before by
noting the positions relative to places they have been.
About Lingodroids
The robots create their own naming system on the fly
as they explore an environment. This is much easier than
requiring them to use languages created by human beings.
Once a robot has randomly named a location, it knows that
the word it has created represents that location and is
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associated with how to get there, where it is, and where
the robot is relative to the location.
Lingodroids are programmed robots based on the
Pioneer3 DX platform available from Mobile Robots. The
Lingodroids also sport a 360 degree panoramic camera
setup, a laser range finder, and a microphone and speaker
system. The robots see using a RatSLAM vision-based SLAM
(Simultanteous Localization, Mapping, and Path Planning)
system that uses images from the 360 degree camera to
construct visual scene matches. The robots use odometric
information from their wheel encoders to assist with
distance information. The robots use the range finders to
avoid objects and follow walls unhindered while exploring
their current environment.
“The robots use the microphone and speakers to
establish a shared attention. If they can hear each other,
then they know they are close to each other,” says Dr. Ruth
Schulz, lead researcher, University of Queensland, Australia.
The robots use a wireless network to communicate other
information between themselves such as words in a text
string to enable their interactions.
Lingodroid Language
“When a Lingodroid decides it needs to create a new
word, it invents the word by combining random syllables.
These syllables are translated into the beeps the robots
share with each other or remain as text only for wireless
This is a map of the different areas the Lingodroid robots
(which are based on the Pioneer3 DX platform) have seen,
named with their own newly created vocabulary, and
recorded.
