Stanislav Ondas

Bio: Stanislav Ondas is an academic researcher from Technical University of Košice. The author has contributed to research in topics: Language model & Human–robot interaction. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 55 publications receiving 277 citations. Previous affiliations of Stanislav Ondas include Mississippi State University.

Generating Robot/Agent backchannels during a storytelling experiment

Abstract: This work presents the development of a real-time framework for the research of Multimodal Feedback of Robots/Talking Agents in the context of Human Robot Interaction (HRI) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). For evaluating the framework, a Multimodal corpus is built (ENTERFACE_STEAD), and a study on the important multimodal features was done for building an active Robot/Agent listener of a storytelling experience with Humans. The experiments show that even when building the same reactive behavior models for Robot and Talking Agents, the interpretation and the realization of the behavior communicated is different due to the different communicative channels Robots/Agents offer be it physical but less human-like in Robots, and virtual but more expressive and human-like in Talking agents.

Service Robot SCORPIO with Robust Speech Interface

Abstract: The SCORPIO is a small-size mini-teleoperator mobile service robot for booby-trap disposal. It can be manually controlled by an operator through a portable briefcase remote control device using joystick, keyboard and buttons. In this paper, the speech interface is described. As an auxiliary function, the remote interface allows a human operator to concentrate sight and/or hands on other operation activities that are more important. The developed speech interface is based on HMM-based acoustic models trained using the SpeechDatE-SK database, a small-vocabulary language model based on fixed connected words, grammar, and the speech recognition setup adapted for low-resource devices. To improve the robustness of the speech interface in an outdoor environment, which is the working area of the SCORPIO service robot, a speech enhancement based on the spectral subtraction method, as well as a unique combination of an iterative approach and a modified LIMA framework, were researched, developed and tested on simulated and real outdoor recordings.

Multimodal dialogue system with NAO and VoiceXML dialogue manager

Abstract: The proposed paper describes a multimodal interactive system based on NAO humanoid robot with an external dialogue management module VoiceON. System can be controlled by voice. NAO produces speech and gestures as a response to the user inputs. Presented multimodal system uses built-in speech recognition and speech synthesis modules adapted to Slovak language, which was originally not supported. Moreover, system accepts VoiceXML dialogue applications for all supported languages. To manage dialogue interaction, a previously developed VoiceXML dialogue manager was adopted. A new module for generation of multimodal output (speech and gestures) was designed, which enables NAO to produce gestures together with speech in several modes.

How chatbots can be involved in the education process

Abstract: Chatbots become more and more popular in the human-machine interactions, because they enable to communicate with the system by the human language, which is a very intuitive and user-friendly. Moreover, chatbots can provide information without time-demanding searching and hide its complexity. Three chatbots were developed for supporting education on the Department of electronics and multimedia telecommunications. First one is the KEMTbot, which is a bot located on the department web page. It provides information from the web and about department staff. The second chatbot is a bot that supports students during the exercises from the subject “Databases”. The last one is a chatbot-like Amazon Alexa skill, which answers questions about the department on Amazon Echo devices.

Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought

Abstract: Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. David McNeill. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 416 pp.

Spoken dialogue technology : toward the conversational userinterface

Abstract: What would you say if your refrigerator told you, " You're having some friends round for hot chocolate later. Maybe you should order two cartons of milk " ? Of course, in Spoken Dialogue Technology, Michael McTear will not give an answer to the question of whether talking to domestic appliances makes sense, but he indicates that even a normal household, for instance, may offer a wide field of application for spoken-language dialogue systems in the near future. Consequently his book primarily focuses on theory and practice of these systems. Addressing undergraduate students as well as postgraduate researchers and practitioners in human-computer interfaces, the book is subdivided into three parts which meet the readers' needs: " Background to Spoken Dialogue Technology " (Chapters 1– 5), " Developing Spoken Dialogue Applications " (Chapters 6 –11), and " Advanced Applications " (Chapters 12–14). Chapter 1, " Talking with Computers: Fact or Fiction, " and Chapter 2, " Spoken Dialogue Applications: Research Directions and Commercial Deployment, " present recent products and aspects of dialogue technology as well as historical linguistic and artificial intelligence approaches to dialogue and simulated conversation. Aspects of present-day commercial use of spoken dialogue technology are also discussed. In Chapter 3, " Understanding Dialogue, " the term dialogue is defined, and four of its key characteristics—dialogue as discourse, dialogue as purposeful activity, dialogue as collaborative activity, and utterances in dialogue—and its structures and processes are described in detail. Chapter 4 gives an overview of the components of a spoken language dialogue system: speech recognition, language understanding, language generation, and text-to-speech synthesis. The central component (i.e., dialogue management) is specified in Chapter 5. Here, dialogue initiative (system initiative, user initiative, and mixed initiative), dialogue control (finite-state-based, frame-based, and agent-based control), and grounding (how to process the user's input) are described. Furthermore, knowledge sources (dialogue history, task record, world knowledge model, domain model, generic model, and user model) and problems that arise when interacting with an external knowledge source are discussed. The second part starts with dialogue engineering, which can be subdivided into analysis and specification of requirements, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation of a dialogue system. The use-case analysis includes user profile (type of user, language, user's experience level, etc.) and usage profile (frequency of use, input/output device type, environment, etc.). The spoken-language requirements can

Mobile robot for telecommunication

Abstract: A system including a mobile telepresence robot, a to telepresence computing device in wireless communication with the robot, and a host computing device in wireless communication with the robot and the telepresence computing device. The host computing device relays User Datagram Protocol traffic between the robot and the telepresence computing device through a firewall.

Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists

Abstract: Describing Morphosyntax:. Guide for Field Linguists. Thomas E. Payne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 413 pp.

Greta: an interactive expressive ECA system

Abstract: We have developed a general purpose use and modular architecture of an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) called Greta. Our 3D agent is able to communicate using verbal and nonverbal channels like gaze, head and torso movements, facial expressions and gestures. It follows the SAIBA framework [10] and the MPEG4 [6] standards. Our system is optimized to be used in interactive applications.