NEAR: NEtwork of Autonomous Robots

拟议的项目致力于开发一个带有传感器和无线网卡的自主机器人网络(NEAR)，目标是开发一个分布式的机器人助手。NEAR的关键应用包括：(A)在半结构化环境中运输和取回物体；(B)组织和重新配置传感器，以便在动态变化的环境中进行观测；以及(C)多个车辆的协调运动，以进行协作操作或高效的群体运动。近距离机器人网络总是在人类用户附近，与用户互动，增强用户的技能，提供一种自然的协同效应。我们在这个项目中的重点是利用自动化和增强方面的进步，并引导他们朝着服务机器人的自主方向发展。我们将开发一个服务于人类的简单移动机器人网络。每个机器人都有一些基本的感知能力(在我们的例子中是视觉)，以及与其他移动机器人交流的能力。机器人可以被编程为表现出简单的行为：控制器和估计器，以及在非常低的水平上耦合感知/感知的策略。使用多机器人的能力能够在不增加单个机器人行为的复杂性的情况下实现自治，而是通过利用这些行为在网络中的分布式执行来实现。由于人类明确地参与了对机器人的编程和指挥，因此有可能通过允许人类以自上而下的方式影响行为的组装和组织来利用这种自然的协同作用。

The proposed project addresses the development of a NEtwork ofAutonomous Robots (NEAR) with sensors and wireless network cardswith the goal of developing a distributed implementation of arobotic assistant. The key applications of NEARinclude: (a) transportation and retrieval of objects in asemi-structured environment; (b) organization and reconfiguration ofsensors for observations in dynamically changing environments; and (c) coordinated motion of multiple vehicles for cooperative manipulationor for efficient group locomotion. The NEAR robot network isalways "near" the human user, interacting with the user, andaugmenting her skills, providing a natural synergism.Our focus in this project is to leverage advances in automation andaugmentation and steer them in the direction of autonomy for servicerobotics. We will develop a network of simple mobile robots serving ahuman being. Each robot has some basic sensing capability (vision inour case) and the ability to communicate with other mobilerobots. Robots can be programmed to exhibit simple behaviors:controllers and estimators and policies that couplessensing/perception at a very low level. The ability to use multiplerobots enables autonomy without increasing the complexity ofindividual robot behaviors but by instead exploiting the distributedexecution of these behaviors in a network. Since the human isexplicitly involved in programming and commanding the robots, it ispossible to exploit this natural synergy by allowing humans toinfluence the assembly of the behaviors and the organization of theteam in a top-down fashion.