Robots That Talk and Listen provides a forward-looking examination of speech and language in robots from technical, functional, and social perspectives.

Contributors address cultural foundations as well as the linguistic skills and technologies that robots need to function effectively in real-world settings. Among the most difficult and complex is the ability to understand and use language.

Speech-enabled automata are already serving as interactive toys, teacher's aides, and research assistants. These robots will soon be joined by personal companions, industrial co-workers, and military support automata.

The social impact of these and other robots extends well beyond the specific tasks they perform. Contributors tackle the most knotty of those issues, notably acceptance of advanced, speech-enabled robots and developing ethical and moral controls for robots.

Topics in this book include:

. Language and Beyond: The True Meaning of "Speech Enabled"
. Robots in Myth and Media
. Enabling Robots to Converse
. Language Learning by Automata
. Handling Noisy Settings
. Empirical Studies of Robots in Real-World Environments
. Acceptance of Intelligent Robots
. Managing Robots that Can Lie and Deceive
. Envisioning a World Shared with Intelligent Robots

Judith A. Markowitz, President, J. Markowitz Consultants, Chicago, IL

I. Robots and Healthcare

1. The Use of Robots in the Healthcare Delivery System: How Changing Demographics Have Created a Need for Automata

2. How to Find the Right Robot to Assist Doctors, Surgeons and Healthcare Workers?

II: Empirical Studies of Robotic Health Assistants at High-Level Facilities

3. Comparing the Performance of Voice-only Robotic Nurses with Multimodal Embodied Agents

4. Overcoming Obstacles to the Integration of Robotic Care: A First-Hand Experience at a High Level Health Facility that Adopted RP-VITA to Perform Clinical Assessments of Critically Ill Patients

5. Introducing Gestonurse to the Operating Theater: Measuring its Effects on Surgical Communication Errors when Performing Endoscopic Procedures

II. Robotic Agents and Medical Triage in Military Combat Zones

6. The Effect of Military Medical Robots on Critical Care Management in the Military

7. Medical Triage and Robotic Agents: A Case Study of Speech-Driven Automata for Handling Military Casualties

8. Using Multimodal Robots in the Military: Adapting to Noisy Environments Where Speech Signals Are Degraded

III. Automata and the Elderly

9. Keeping the Elderly Independent: The Effect of Voice-Controlled Robots on Eldercare

10. Using Speech and Automata to Perform Clinical Assessment of Homebound Elderly

11. A Case Study of Speech-Enabled Robots and their Comforting Early-Stage Dementia Patients

IV. Conclusion