dialogue_manager

A ROS2 lifecycle node that handles multi-modal communication between the robot and humans.

Overview

The Dialogue Manager:

• Provides responses to human utterances using an external chatbot backend
• Sends responses to TTS for speech synthesis
• Exposes three high-level skills: chat, ask, and say
• Supports multi-modal expressions with synchronized gestures and expressions

graph LR
    subgraph "Dialogue Manager"
        CHAT["/skill/chat"]
        ASK["/skill/ask"]
        SAY["/skill/say"]
        DM["Dialogue<br/>Tracking"]
    end
    
    MC["Mission<br/>Controller"] --> CHAT & ASK & SAY
    
    SPEECH["/humans/voices/*/speech"] --> DM
    
    DM --> CB["Chatbot<br/>Engine"]
    DM --> TTS["TTS<br/>Engine"]
    DM --> INT["/intents"]
    DM --> CC["~/closed_captions"]

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ROS API

All topics/services exist only in active state. Actions exist in both configured and active states but reject goals in the former.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
chatbot	string	"chatbot"	Chatbot node FQN prefix. Empty = disabled
enable_default_chat	bool	false	Enable default chat while active
default_chat_role	string	"__default__"	Role for default chat
default_chat_configuration	string	""	Configuration for default chat
chatbot_startup_timeout	float	30.0	Max wait for chatbot startup (s)
chatbot_response_timeout	float	5.0	Max wait for chatbot response (s)
multi_modal_expression_timeout	float	60.0	Max expression duration (s)
markup_action_timeout	float	10.0	Default markup action timeout (s)
markup_libraries	string[]	["config/00-default_markup_libraries.json"]	Markup definition files
disabled_markup_actions	string[]	["motion"]	Markup actions to skip

Topics

Subscribed

Topic	Type	Description
/humans/voices/tracked	hri_msgs/IdsList	Tracked voice IDs
/humans/voices/<id>/speech	hri_msgs/LiveSpeech	User speech input

Published

Topic	Type	Description
~/closed_captions	hri_actions_msgs/ClosedCaption	Captions for all speech
~/robot_speech	std_msgs/String	Current word being spoken
~/currently_waiting_for_chatbot_response	std_msgs/Bool	True while waiting for chatbot
/intents	hri_actions_msgs/Intent	Detected intents
/diagnostics	diagnostic_msgs/DiagnosticArray	Node diagnostics

Action Servers

Action	Interface	Description
/skill/chat	communication_skills/Chat	Start dialogue with defined role
/skill/ask	communication_skills/Ask	Ask question and get structured answers
/skill/say	communication_skills/Say	Speak multi-modal expression

Priority handling: Goals are rejected if meta.priority ≤ any ongoing dialogue or expression.

Action Clients

Action	Interface	Description
<chatbot>/start_dialogue	chatbot_msgs/Dialogue	Open dialogue channel
tts_engine/tts	tts_msgs/TTS	Text-to-speech

Service Clients

Service	Interface	Description
<chatbot>/dialogue_interaction	chatbot_msgs/DialogueInteraction	Send input, get response

Launch

ros2 launch dialogue_manager dialogue_manager.launch.py