Method of performing multi-modal dialogue between a humanoid robot and user, computer program product and humanoid robot for implementing said method

A method of performing a dialogue between a humanoid robot and at least one user comprising the following steps, carried out iteratively by said humanoid robot:

• i) acquiring a plurality of input signals from respective sensors, at least one said sensor being a sound sensor and at least one other sensor being a motion or image sensor;
• ii) interpreting the acquired signals to recognize a plurality of events generated by said user, selected from a group comprising:
• the utterance of at least a word or sentence, an intonation of voice, a gesture, a body posture, a facial expression;
• iii) determining a response of said humanoid robot, comprising at least one event selected from a group comprising:
• the utterance of at least a word or sentence, an intonation of voice, a gesture, a body posture, a facial expression, said determining being performed by applying a set of rules, each said rule associating a set of input events to a response of the robot;
• iv) generating, by said humanoid robot, said or each said event;
• wherein at least some of said rules applied at said step iii) associate a response to a combination of at least two events jointly generated by said user and recognized at said step ii), of which at least one is not a word or sentence uttered by said user;
• and
• wherein said step ii) comprises searching a match between an acquired signal and an event belonging to a list of expected events stored in a memory of said humanoid robot, or accessible by it, said searching being carried out by successively using a plurality of matching methods with increasing complexity until an event is recognized with a confidence score greater than a predetermined value, or after the highest recognition method has complexity has been used.