Using Knowledge Representation for Perceptual Anchoring in a Robotic System

In this work we introduce symbolic knowledge representation and reasoning capabilities to enrich perceptual anchoring. The idea that encompasses perceptual anchoring is the creation and maintenance of a connection between the symbolic and perceptual description that refer to the same object in the environment. In this work we further extend the symbolic layer by combining a knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) system with the anchoring module to exploit a knowledge inference mechanisms. We implemented a prototype of this novel approach to explore through initial experimentation the advantages of integrating a symbolic knowledge system to the anchoring framework in the context of an intelligent home. Our results show that using the KRR we are better able to cope with ambiguities in the anchoring module through exploitation of human robot interaction.