Waking up Alexa or Google with a question works well enough in the relatively unchanging home environment. But when trying to control robots in a combat environment, asking Alexa politely to find the source of enemy fire is a whole different challenge. That's why U.S. Army and academic researchers joined forces to develop a better way to interact and control autonomous systems such as mobile robots. Researchers from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory (ARL), in collaboration with the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, developed a new conversational model called the Joint Understanding and Dialogue Interface (JUDI) capability. The approach to speech recognition "enables bi-directional conversational interactions between soldiers and autonomous systems," according to a statement from the U.S. Army.

The United States Army is developing a conversational intelligence platform that will let soldiers give voice commands to robotic vehicles using natural language. Instead of requiring formal commands, the Joint Understanding and Dialogue Interface, JUDI, will be able to understand and interpret intent in its orders, clarifying them with questions as needed. The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory is building JUDI in a partnership with the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies. Their goal for JUDI is to combine an understanding of informal language with data from its sensors to grasp the context of its orders. In the robots used for testing right now, basically very advanced miniature cars JUDI will theoretically be able to take a single command like, "go to the top of the hill" and combine camera data identifying a nearby hill with its natural language processing to work out its goal and how to achieve it, with follow-up questions to the operator as needed.

Talking is our most essential form of communication. It is useful in day to day operations but it becomes even more critical in high-pressure situations such as those encountered by the army personnel. In light of this, army researchers have developed an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) that is capable of carrying on a conversation. Yes! It's a military AI that can speak. The researchers from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies, have called their new AI the Joint Understanding and Dialogue Interface, or JUDI for short.