Grounded language in a nutshell

 Grounded language can be described as sensor data tagging. It connects the internal raw sensory data of a robot with the external semantic tagging system. The linking is realized in a DIKW pyramid and improves man to machine communication. Such a communication system allows the robot to offload the intelligence to a human.

Here is an example. Suppose a warehouse robot stands in front of an obstacle. Because the robot's software isn't able to solve the situation, the robot asks a human operator what to do next. With the help of grounded language the output of the robot is: "obstacle: near, battery: 85%, question: What to do?". The human operator reads the textual message and takes a decision which is send back to the robot.

There are multiple techniques available how to implement such a system in software, for example with a handcoded language parser, or with a neural network. The shared similarity is, that all these attempts are based on natural language and put a high emphasizes on man to machine communication.

The term grounding is referencing to multiple situation:
a) its a link between sensor data and textual annotation
b) its a link between the internal robot structure and the external environment
c) its a link between low level and high level problem description

In more colloquial terms, grounded language means to use English for teleoperation of a robot. This principle seems not very impressive because it was demonstrated in science fiction movies multiple times in the past. The innovation is, that there is no alternative available to realize artificial intelligence. That means all advanced robots are built as teleoperated machine who understands English language.