In the last bimester, we have been working on the experimental evaluation of the prototypes (Task 4).  On the one hand, we have defined and tested the procedure for performance evaluation of the vocal interfaces defined for different robots and environments. On the other hand, laboratory experiments have been performed to improve the prototypes.

MV has finalized the development of the wizard prototype (Task 3.2) and the corresponding technical report.

S4R has been presented at Robots @ DIAG November 26^th, at DIS (Roma) within the events organized for the EU Robotics Week 2013.

In the last bimester, we have focussed our work on with the refinement and testing of the Service Prototype and Demonstrator, (Deliverable 3.1) which is part of the Task 3: System Development, Implementation, Integration and Testing. Specifically, we have completed the interface to the MS dictation engine, in preparation to a refinement of the ASR process, that relies on both a recognition based on a language model specified using an application dependent grammar and a generic language model. We have adopted and specialized the dialog infrastructure offered by the Speaky Mediavoice development environment and we have thus delivered a new version of the prototype system. We have run some tests on the VUI, and we have collected the results obtained by processing a small corpus of spoken sentences. The analysis of these results has been used in order to define possible improvements of the prototype.

S4R has been presented at the ECHORD Workshop in connection with IEEE IROS 2012, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 11^th, 2012.

In the last bimester we have worked on with the activities of Task 3: System Development, Implementation, Integration and Testing, namely on the implementation and testing of the first prototype of the VUI for the chosen domains. This effort will be reported in Deliverable 3.1, Mid-term Home Service Prototype and Demonstrator, Mid-term Home Service Prototype and Demonstrator. More specifically, we have built a debugging interface for the speech interpretation process. Moreover, we have implemented in ROS the modules for the integration of the knowledge about the environment, represented as a semantic map, and for “grounding” of the commands of the robot in a real application scenario. Finally, we completed the preliminary work on Task 4: Experimental Evaluation; on the definition of experimental set-up and performance metrics, by acquiring the semantic map of a real home, that will be used to display the execution of the commands given to the robot using the Player/Stage simulator. The poster describing the current state of the project has been successfully presented at AAAI-12 Media Fair (Toronto, Canada, July 23-27).

In the last bimester we have worked on with the activities of Task 3: System Development, Implementation, Integration and Testing, namely on the implementation and testing of the first prototype of the VUI for the chosen domains. According to the results of the design phase, we are focusing on the generalized components that are the basis for the implementation of the VUI and development of the wizard is moved to a later stage. More specifically, we have a complete modular grammar for the humanoid robot in the home domain, according to the methodology described in the appendix of the Technical Report D21. To this end, we have updated the command description therein, since we have now released a more polished and complete set reference for the commands of the robot. In addition, we have refined the software architecture and implemented a simple prototype version of the components for selecting the interpretation and managing the dialog with the user. Moreover, we have started the work on Task 4: Experimental Evaluation; in particular, we have begun working on Task T4.1: Definition of experimental set-up and performance metrics. Finally, a poster describing the current state of the project has been accepted for presentation at AAAI-12 Media Fair.

In the last bimester, we have consolidated the S4R activities related with Task 1, and we have completed the S4R activities planned in Task 2, concerning the design of the process for the generation Vocal User Interface for specific robotic applications. The details are available in the Technical report released at the end of Task 2 (April 30^th). In March, S4R decided to discontinue the development with the ASR Loquendo (due to unavailability of the product), and adopted the Microsoft Speech Platform, which required an additional integration effort, after which the new platform became functionally compatible with the previous one. In addition, we have implemented the interface for testing our interface on the Cobot platform developed at Carnegie Mellon University, as an additional robotic platform to support a solution that can be easily customized to different robotic platforms. In March, the prototype implementation of S4R on the NAO platform has been demonstrated at RomeCup 2012 (a RoboCup Junior event, held on March 23, 2012 in the Rome City Hall) and tested by the vice mayor of Rome.