NRI-Small: Spacial Primitives for Enabling Situated Human-Robot Interaction

为了实现自然和富有成效的人-机器人交互(HRI)，协作机器人必须理解和控制“代理”--空间的社会用途--以便以人类常用和理解的方式进行交流。本项目致力于回答这样一个问题：社会因素(言语和手势)、环境因素(大噪音和弱光)和个人因素(听力和视觉障碍)如何影响人类和协作机器人之间的定位和交流，以及协作机器人应该如何调整其社会行为以最大化人类对其社会信号的感知？该项目将开发使用远程临场感和自主协作机器人来识别和控制HRI中代理协作机器人行为的原则性计算模型。这项研究将为联合机器人技术确立HRI的基本组成部分，对社交辅助环境中的特殊需求用户--特别是老年人--包括就地和机构中的老年人--产生具体影响，目的是减轻孤立和抑郁，并鼓励锻炼和社会化。更广泛的影响：这项工作将为机器人设计和控制提供信息，并提供软件和公共HRI数据语料库，供世界各地的研究人员使用。除了机器人技术，该项目还承诺为社会科学领域的长期研究提供信息、验证和扩展。该项目还包括一个强有力的公众和K-12宣传部分，包括将人权倡议主题编织成年度区域和国际宣传活动。这些活动以大规模开放参观和教育讲习班为特色，提供互动演示和动手活动，突出强调计算系统中的人的因素，以此作为提高人们对与STEM有关的活动的兴趣的有效手段。

To enable natural and productive human-robot interaction (HRI), a co-robot must both understand and control "proxemics" -- the social use of space -- in order to communicate in ways commonly used and understood by humans. This project focuses on answering the question: How do social (speech and gesture), environmental (loud noises and low lighting), and personal (hearing and visual impairments) factors influence positioning and communication between humans and co-robots, and how should a co-robot adjust its social behaviors to maximize human perception of its social signals?The project will develop principled computational models for the recognition and control of proxemic co-robot behavior in HRI using both telepresence and autonomous co-robots. The research will establish a foundational component of HRI for co-robotics, with specific impact on special needs users in socially assistive contexts -- particularly the elderly, both aging in place and in institutions -- with the goal of mitigating isolation and depression, and encouraging exercise and socialization. Broader impacts: The work will inform robot design and control, and provide software and a corpus of public HRI data for use by researchers worldwide. Beyond robotics, the project promises to inform, validate, and extend longstanding research in the social sciences. This project also includes a strong public and K-12 outreach component consisting of weaving the HRI themes being developed into annual regional and international outreach events. The events feature large-scale open houses and educational workshops with interactive demonstrations and hands-on activities that highlight human factors in computational systems as an effective means of increasing interest in STEM-related activities.