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Speech-Guided Sequential Planning for Autonomous Navigation Using Large Language Model Meta AI 3 (Llama3)

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Social Robotics (ICSR + AI 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 15562))

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Abstract

In social robotics, a pivotal focus is enabling robots to engage with humans in a more natural and seamless manner. The emergence of advanced large language models (LLMs) has driven significant advancements in integrating natural language understanding capabilities into social robots. This paper presents a system for speech-guided sequential planning in pick and place tasks, which are found across a range of application areas. The proposed system uses Large Language Model Meta AI (Llama3) to interpret voice commands by extracting essential details through parsing and decoding the commands into sequential actions. These actions are sent to DRL-VO, a learning-based control policy built on the Robot Operating System (ROS) that allows a robot to autonomously navigate through social spaces with static infrastructure and crowds of people. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the system in simulation experiment using Turtlebot 2 in ROS1 and Turtlebot 3 in ROS2. We conduct hardware trials using a Clearpath Robotics Jackal UGV, highlighting its potential for real-world deployment in scenarios requiring flexible and interactive robotic behaviors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We employ the 8 billion parameter version (llama3-8b-8192 m) instead of the larger counterparts, such as the 80 billion parameter model, due to larger models exhibiting a tendency to assign specific room numbers when interpreting generic commands. For instance, if asked to navigate to “TRAIL lab,” it might erroneously label it with a hallucinated room number, like “Room 111.” Additionally, we can use the smaller model onboard the robot rather than relying on remote API services, leading to quicker response times and greater practicality for real-time applications.

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Acknowledgment

This work was funded by NSF grant CNS-2143312. The authors would like to thank Zhanteng Xie, Jared Levin, and Alexander Derrico for their assistance with the hardware experiments.

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Correspondence to Alkesh K. Srivastava.

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Srivastava, A.K., Dames, P. (2025). Speech-Guided Sequential Planning for Autonomous Navigation Using Large Language Model Meta AI 3 (Llama3). In: Palinko, O., et al. Social Robotics. ICSR + AI 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 15562. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-3519-1_15

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