Computation vs communication in robotics

 In the past, robots were designed with algorithms as the core element. The algorithm was encapsulated inside the robots control software and was responsible for image recognition and action planning. The problem was that programming such a robot software is very difficult and the resulting autonomous robot can't do complex tasks.

A seldom discussed powerful alternative is based on a communication paradigm. The principle was introduced by Stevan Harnad in an influential paper from 1990. The core element of the symbol grounding problem is a language game which was described by Ludwig Wittgenstein much earlier. Language games are matching natural language with actions in the reality. For example a human operator might say "move until the wall and stop". If the robot is executing the command, he has won the game and demonstrated a good understanding of English.

The main reason why communication in robotics is only seldom discussed is because it differs from classical algorithm centric understanding. Algorithms are the main subject in computer science, they are described with mathematical terms and implemented in computer software. There are endless amount of algorithms available including planning algorithms and model predictive control algorithms. The problem is, that all the efforts are meaningless under the new paradigm of communication based robotics. Communication is defined as language based communication with a sender receiver model. The inner working of a human to robot interaction can't be described with computer science anymore but it has to do with semiotics and Linguistics. Both inventors, Wittgenstein and Harnad, have its roots in linguistics and philosophy but not in mathematics.

A communication based robotics paradigm has many advantages over former algorithm centric robotics. It reduces the complexity of robot programming with the help of natural language. Instead of programming endless amount of codelines in a computer language, the core element of a communication based robotics is a natural language like English which provides a vocabulary for describing the world. There are nouns for referencing to objects like "wall, junction" and there are verbs for describing activities like "move, stop, rotate". These words are combined into sentences which allows to formulate more complex tasks.

The only technical challenge is, to program a parser which understands the mini language. The robot receives a command from a human and translates the command into action. Of course, a parser is programmed with an algorithm inside a computer program, so there is a need to write software.