When it comes to robotics many people seem to have the idea that robots will be completely autonomous, fully functioning within society. While that isn’t likely to happen any time soon, today there is a technology that is an important part of robotics, with regards to speech. Today, we can have conversations with bots that simulate intelligent conversations.
As we see advances in robotics, from the industrial aspects to those being introduced to consumers, speech is always going to be an important topic. This is no wonder, as speech is of course an integral facet to human behavior, and this will be necessary if humans will use robots on some regular basis (at least ideally).
Today there are already programs and artificial intelligence software that uses natural language to simulate intelligent conversations. Ultra Hal and Alicebot are probably the two most popular manifestations currently available. As important pieces of software that could potentially be a vital part of robotics, this type of software is one that has successfully measured imitating human beings.
So, what is the future in this type of technology? It is likely that as technology progresses it will create more lifelike forms of humanity within robots. Supporting this kind of technology is voice recognition, done with software that can read a particular voice, recognize it, and develop a language that can respond to other robots as well as to a human.
As this area of technology grows we will see how these advancements come together to create new means of communication between man and machine. Already software that can speak is being used for things like creating reminders or making reservations at a restaurant through various common communication devices. Perhaps in the future we will all be able to have thought provoking conversation with robots, as well as use them for tasks in our everyday lives.