RI: Small: Natural Language-Based Human Instruction for Task Embedded Robots

这个项目将通过引入一种使用空间语言执行、组成和纠正任务的新方法，以及处理与人长期互动的挑战，来推动社会服务机器人的科学水平。调查团队将利用之前在CoBot服务机器人方面的工作作为一个科学平台。CoBot可以运输物体、传递信息、护送人们和去一些地方，在一栋多层建筑中连续几周执行这些任务。该团队将合作研究、开发和评估通过自然语言学习、组成和纠正任务执行的算法。这项拟议的研究将使任何人都能够训练机器人；我们将使用CoBot机器人来对我们提出的算法进行评估和测试。在真实世界环境中连续操作的机器人可以根据人类的指令更新其行为，这将对学生、教师和游客与机器人交互和查看机器人的有用性产生广泛的影响。例如：(1)可定制的智能机器人将给人们创造的能力，简单而直观地更新机器人的行为，使非专家能够广泛地访问系统。(2)社区外展将改变认为机器人是静态的、不可改变的系统的观点，使人们意识到机器人与我们的环境共存。我们将邀请不同年龄段的孩子和来自不同文化的人通过基于语言的教学与我们的合作机器人互动。(3)已经并将继续探索和鼓励跨多个研究小组的协同活动(例如，持续的环境测量和监测)。

This project will advance the scientific state of the art in social service robots by introducing a novel approach for performing, composing, and correcting tasks using spatial language, and for handling the challenges of long-term interaction with people. The team of investigators will leverage prior work on CoBot service robots as a scientific platform. CoBots can transport objects, deliver messages, escort people and go to places, continuously executing these tasks over multiple weeks in a multi-floor building. The team will collaborate to research, develop, and evaluate algorithms for learning, composing, and correcting the execution of tasks via natural language. The proposed research will enable any person to train the robot; we will use the CoBot robots to perform evaluation and testing of our proposed algorithms.The vision of a continuously operating robot in a real-world environment that can update its behavior in response to human instruction will have a broad impact on the way students, faculty and visitors interact with and view the usefulness of robots. Some examples include: (1) Customizable intelligent robots will give people the creative power to simply and intuitively update robot behavior, making the system broadly accessible to non-experts. (2) Outreach to the community will transform the view that robots are static unchangeable systems by creating an awareness towards robots co-inhabiting our environment. We will invite children of different age groups and people from different cultures to interact with our co-robot through language-based instruction. (3) Synergistic activities across multiple research groups have and will continue to be explored and encouraged (e.g., continuous environmental measurement and monitoring).