  Natural-language-facilitated human-robot cooperation (NLC), in which natural
language (NL) is used to share knowledge between a human and a robot for
conducting intuitive human-robot cooperation (HRC), is continuously developing
in the recent decade. Currently, NLC is used in several robotic domains such as
manufacturing, daily assistance and health caregiving. It is necessary to
summarize current NLC-based robotic systems and discuss the future developing
trends, providing helpful information for future NLC research. In this review,
we first analyzed the driving forces behind the NLC research. Regarding to a
robot s cognition level during the cooperation, the NLC implementations then
were categorized into four types {NL-based control, NL-based robot training,
NL-based task execution, NL-based social companion} for comparison and
discussion. Last based on our perspective and comprehensive paper review, the
future research trends were discussed.
