In some situations, it is necessary that a computer reacts to completely natural language. It might be analysing text or speech which was not originally intended for computer analysis, such as newspapers. It might also deal with users who are not trained in or used to interacting with the machine. In other situations, it is perfectly acceptable to use formal language, and it might even be preferable from the user's perspective. The typical example here is programming languages. But there are also situations where we might want a compromise between the qualities of these two. It can be convenient when dealing with robots, whether it be industrial assembly robots, toy robots, or automatic lawnmowers. If these machines could respond to spoken or written language, as opposed to simple buttons and switches, they could be made to perform more complex actions without becoming too difficult to handle. While perfect understanding of natural language would be largely sufficient, that is a level of technology we are far away from and not really willing to wait for, and unlike for some other applications it is not necessary. Such machines have a limited set of uses, and therefore need only a limited vocabulary, and they could also generally make do with a less advanced grammar.
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