Grounding linguistic analysis in control applications
Name
813960208-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
15.14 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cde81d79e54c5df324bcccaaa9dfa91c
Author(s)
Branavan, Satchuthananthavale Rasiah Kuhan
Advisor(s)
Regina Barzilay.
Date Issued
2012
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis addresses the problem of grounding linguistic analysis in control applications, such as automated maintenance of computers and game playing. We assume access to natural language documents that describe the desired behavior of a control algorithm, either via explicit step-by-step instructions, via high-level strategy advice, or by specifying the dynamics of the control domain. Our goal is to develop techniques for automatically interpreting such documents, and leveraging the textual information to effectively guide control actions. We show that in this setting, langauge analysis can be learnt effectively via feedback signals inherent to the control application, obviating the need for manual annotations. Moreover we demonstrate how information automatically acquired from text can be used to improve the performance of the target control application. We apply our ideas to three applications of increasing linguistic and control complexity - interpreting step-by-step instructions into commands in a graphical user interface; interpreting high-level strategic advice to play a complex strategy game; and leveraging text descriptions of world dynamics to guide high-level planning. In all cases, our methods produce text analyses that agree with human notions of correctness, while yielding significant improvements over strong text-unaware methods in the target control application.
Description
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Vita.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 175-182).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
