This article presents the design and the implementation of a cloud system for knowledge-based autonomous interaction devised for Social Robots and other conversational agents. The system is particularly convenient for low-cost robots and devices: it can be used as a stand-alone dialogue system or as an integration to provide "background" dialogue capabilities to any preexisting Natural Language Processing ability that the robot may already have as part of its basic skills. By connecting to the cloud, developers are provided with a sustainable solution to manage verbal interaction through a network connection, with about 3,000 topics of conversation ready for "chit-chatting" and a library of pre-cooked plans that only needs to be grounded into the robot's physical capabilities. The system is structured as a set of REST API endpoints so that it can be easily expanded by adding new APIs to improve the capabilities of the clients connected to the cloud. Another key feature of the system is that it has been designed to make the development of its clients straightforward: in this way, multiple robots and devices can be easily endowed with the capability of autonomously interacting with the user, understanding when to perform specific actions, and exploiting all the information provided by cloud services. The article outlines and discusses the results of the experiments performed to assess the system's performance in terms of response time, paving the way for its use both for research and market solutions. Links to repositories with clients for ROS and popular robots such as Pepper and NAO are available on request.

翻译：本文介绍了一种面向社会机器人及其他对话智能体的、基于知识的自主交互云系统的设计与实现。该系统特别适用于低成本机器人与设备：既可作为独立对话系统使用，也可作为集成模块，为机器人已有基础技能中的自然语言处理能力提供"背景"对话功能。通过连接云端，开发者能够获得一种可持续的解决方案，通过网络连接管理言语交互，系统包含约3000个"闲聊"话题库及预置行为计划库，这些计划仅需与机器人的物理能力进行匹配即可使用。系统采用REST API端点集架构，便于通过新增API来扩展功能，提升云端连接客户端的能力。另一关键特性在于，系统设计使得其客户端的开发过程极为简便：多个机器人与设备均可轻松获得自主与用户交互、判断何时执行特定操作以及利用云端服务提供的全部信息的能力。本文阐述并讨论了为评估系统响应时间性能所开展的实验成果，为其在科研与市场解决方案中的应用奠定了基础。如需获取面向ROS及Pepper、NAO等流行机器人的客户端代码仓库链接，可向作者索取。