Compensating for Limitations in Speech-Based Natural Language Processing with Multimodal Interfaces in UAV Operation

Natural language interfaces are becoming more ubiquitous. By allowing for more natural communication, reducing the complexity of interacting with machines, and enabling non-expert users, these interfaces have found homes in numerous common products. However, these natural language interfaces still have great room for growth and development in order to better reflect human speech patterns. Intuitive speech communication is often accompanied by gestural information that is currently lacking from most speech interfaces. Exclusion of gestural data reduces a machine's ability to interpret deictic information and understand some semantic intent. To allow for truly intuitive communication between humans and machines, a natural language interface must understand not only speech but also gestural data. This paper will outline the limitations and restrictions of some of the most popular and common speech-only natural language processing algorithms and systems in use today. Focus will be given to extra-linguistic communication aspects, including gestural information. Current research trends will then be presented that have been designed to compensate for these gaps by incorporating extra-linguistic information. The success of each of these trends will then be evaluated, as well as the hopefulness of continued investigative efforts. Additionally, a model multimodal interface will be presented that incorporates language and gesture data in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of such an interface. The gestural portion of this interface is included to compensate for some of the limitations of speech-only natural language interfaces. Combining these two types of natural language interfaces thereby works to reduce the limitations of natural language interfaces and increase their success. This presentation will discuss how the two interfaces work together and will specify how the speech interface limitations are addressed through the inclusion of a gestural system.