Patents on the soles of your shoes...: Oh, patents! Humanoid voices (2)

Lots more patented inventions for humanoids in the quest to emulate participation in human conversations!

The Softbank Robotics family of robots are all connected robots. This makes them all technically unfinished products, considering that their functionalities might be indefinitely expanded, customized and modified with downloadable apps and extensions, designed by a community of third-party developers.

Access to the world wide web, and to a remote database of information, greatly improves the humanoid’s capacity to parse and respond to human input in a dialogue, as it provides a way of personalizing interactions and breaking out of canned and repetitive modes of response. Indeed, even when the prior art of humanoid output is programmed to prevent repetitions, locally stored responses (even shuffled) are substantially the same for all human interlocutors. For an extreme example of stereotypical interaction, everyone has experienced interactive computer voice response (IVR) systems on the telephone, designed to lead human callers indiscriminately through a script and its options. For a humanoid robot seeking to function as a companion, this sort of indiscriminate, pre-recorded and stereotypical routine is unacceptable. The companion robot requires a bit more conversational capacity, if it is to eventually function as an assistant to daily living, and especially if it is to create engaging communication, or any kind of bond, albeit an inevitably deceptive one.

The invention recited in US2016283465, titled Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method, precisely addresses the issue of conversation ability, and in particular two aspects, termed: personalization, and progression, both within and across sessions of communication.

The patent discloses that the humanoid robot has access to a remote database containing user profiles which may be extracted and updated with new information provided in the dialogue with a human interlocutor. Similarly, the humanoid robot is programmed to use profile information in the responses it generates, or to solicit more information to fill-in missing profile information. So, for example, the humanoid may identify an interlocutor by name, based on input data from camera sensors (not only verbal input), and then recall the previous conversation, based on stored history information in the profile, to generate a more personalized response, as in the following sequence, cited in the patent:

[0062] Robot: Hello Jean! Thanks for coming back to see me. That makes me happy!
[0063] How have you been since yesterday?

The profile might also be linked to additional contextual information that the humanoid can use in response to human input. The example cited in the patent concerns Europe Day, celebrated on May 9, and both the user profile information concerning "Mother tongue" and the missing information in the profile on "Other languages spoken". The cited dialogue prompt, generated by the robot to feed the conversation, and its human response, run as follows:

[0069] Robot: Tell me, do you know that today is Europe day? I think it's great, these countries uniting, with all the different languages and cultures. Also, I speak a number of European languages! And you, Jean, do you speak any languages other than French? [...]

[0072] Human: Yes, I speak English fluently.

The abstract for US2016283465 is included below. The patent figure drawing No. 1 is also included. The drawing shows a human interlocutor, and a humanoid robot with access, via a communication network, to a remote server containing user profiles, for use (extraction and update) in dialogue with humans.

A method for performing a dialog between a machine, preferably a humanoid robot, and at least one human speaker, comprises the following steps, implemented by a computer: a) identifying the human speaker; b) extracting from a database a speaker profile comprising a plurality of dialog variables, at least one value being assigned to at least one of the dialog variables; c) receiving and analyzing at least one sentence originating from the speaker; and d) formulating and emitting at least one response sentence as a function at least of the sentence received and interpreted in step c) and of one dialog variable of the speaker profile. [Abstract
US2016283465]

This patent is part of a family, the list of which is appended below.

US2016283465 (A1) ― 2016-09-29 - Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method
AU2014331209 (A1) ― 2016-05-19 - Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method
CA2925930 (A1) ― 2015-04-09 - Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method
EP3053162 (A1) ― 2016-08-10 - Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method
FR3011375 (A1) ― 2015-04-03 - Procédé de dialogue entre une machine, telle qu'un robot humanoïde, et un interlocuteur humain, produit programme d'ordinateur et robot humanoïde pour la mise en œuvre d'un tel procédé
JP2016536630 (A) ― 2016-11-24 - 人型ロボット等の機械と人間話者との間の対話方法、コンピュータプログラム製品、および同方法を実行する人型ロボット
MX2016004208 (A) ― 2017-08-16 - Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method.
WO2015049198 (A1) ― 2015-04-09 - Method for dialogue between a machine, such as a humanoid robot, and a human interlocutor; computer program product; and humanoid robot for implementing such a method

So, does it all work? Can Softbank Robotics humanoids hold up their end of the conversation? Are Softbank Robotics humanoids likable? Lovable? Engaging? Can these humanoids be potential companions? The following video shows what happened with Nao, at three schools in the UK.