2025/07/15 by Ana Davila, Davila, Ana, Jacinto Colan +3 · 3 citations
Engineering · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Robotics (cs.RO) #Robotics and Automated Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.11525
openalex publication_date 2025/07/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Ambiguity in natural language instructions poses significant risks in safety-critical human-robot interaction, particularly in domains such as surgery. To address this, we propose a framework that uses Large Language Models (LLMs) for ambiguity detection specifically designed for collaborative surgical scenarios. Our method employs an ensemble of LLM evaluators, each configured with distinct prompting techniques to identify linguistic, contextual, procedural, and critical ambiguities. A chain-of-thought evaluator is included to systematically analyze instruction structure for potential issues. Individual evaluator assessments are synthesized through conformal prediction, which yields non-conformity scores based on comparison to a labeled calibration dataset. Evaluating Llama 3.2 11B and Gemma 3 12B, we observed classification accuracy exceeding 60% in differentiating ambiguous from unambiguous surgical instructions. Our approach improves the safety and reliability of human-robot collaboration in surgery by offering a mechanism to identify potentially ambiguous instructions before robot action.