CAREER: Drones in Public: Foundational Interaction Research

小型无人驾驶飞行器(SUAV)，或称无人机，是采用最多的机器人类型之一，在农业和公共安全方面的应用已经在户外公共空间无处不在。但设计限制和缺乏交互原则限制了它们在室内使用的采用。这项研究的目标是发现在不同空间和不同用户之间进行通信的suav飞行路线的广泛交互原则，以便在室内导航和电池寿命等设计限制得到解决后，无人机能够安全、高效和信息丰富地与人进行交互。为此，第一个挑战将是找出人类和机器人之间可能造成不安全和低效互动的关键通信故障或障碍，并确定避免这些问题的策略。将制定从车辆到用户的手势交流指南，以便在尊重个人空间要求的同时产生更安全、更自然的互动。这项研究的两个核心假设是，手势通信将允许更好地向旁观者展示机器人状态或知识，同时无需修改即可应用于现有平台，以及交互距离需要适应车辆、用户和环境的设计，以保持交互中的舒适性和效率。这项工作将对教育和社会产生广泛的影响，通过开展有针对性的活动来提高对人-机器人互动的理解。教育将通过为K-12学生制定课程计划、将研究纳入本科生人机交互课程以及为本科生和研究生提供为期一学期的人-机器人交互(HRI)课程等活动来支持。其他外展工作将包括与当地第一标题学校的6-8年级学生进行为期一个月的互动，向K-5学生传授科学方法，以及为成年人举办夜校，向他们介绍当前的机器人技术和HRI研究。国际计算机协会将继续努力扩大对计算机科学研究的参与。这项研究将包括与无人机手势通信和舒适距离相关的三个平行目标。目标1将重点放在车辆状态信息的交流动作上；手势将通过参与式设计产生，并使用社会科学的方法进行测试。目标2也将从社会科学的方法中获得信息，但将专注于使用无人机进行距离，并将利用PI实验室中现有的一个房间，该房间有可移动的墙壁、摄像机和运动捕捉系统。这两个研究目标中的每一个都可以在彼此没有进展的情况下进行；然而，它们的共同探索是很自然的，因为手势是由不同的车辆传达的，缩放到空间，而机器人执行可能需要人类参与的任务。这项联合调查将包括目标3，该目标将侧重于有效的信号发送，将距离工作纳入飞行路线，以及与执行各种任务的用户进行接收。项目成果将通过使无人机能够生成基于高度独立的人类-机器人团队的接收可能性和舒适度而优化的通信飞行路线来改变近距离HRI。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (sUAVs), or drones, are one of the most adopted types of robot and have become ubiquitous in outdoor public spaces for applications in agriculture and public safety. But design limitations and lack of interaction principles have limited their adoption for indoor uses. The goal of this research is to discover broad interaction principles for communicative sUAV flight paths in various spaces and with diverse users, so that when design limitations such as indoor navigation and battery life are solved the drones will be capable of safe, efficient, and informative interactions with people. To this end, the first challenge will be to identify key communication failures, or barriers between humans and robots, which can create unsafe and inefficient interactions, and to define strategies for avoiding these problems. Guidelines will be developed for gestural communication from a vehicle to a user in order to generate safer and more natural interactions, while respecting personal space requirements. The two central hypotheses underlying this research are that gestural communication will allow better visibility of robot state or knowledge to bystanders while being applicable to existing platforms without modifications, and that interaction distances will need to adapt to the design of the vehicle, the user, and the environment to maintain comfort and efficiency in interactions. This work will have broad impacts both on education and on society through directed activities to improve understanding of human-robot interaction. Education will be supported through activities such as lesson plans for K-12 students, integration of the research into an undergraduate human-computer interaction class, and informing a semester-long course for both undergraduate and graduate students on human-robot interaction (HRI). Additional outreach efforts will include a month-long interaction with 6-8th grade students from local Title 1 schools teaching K-5 students about the scientific method, and an evening class for adults to inform them about current robotics and HRI research. The PI will continue her ongoing efforts to broaden participation in computer science research. This research will encompass three parallel objectives related to gestural communications by sUAVs and comfortable distancing. Objective 1 will focus on communicative motions of state information from the vehicle; gestures will be generated through participatory design and tested using methods from the social sciences. Objective 2 will also be informed by methods from the social sciences, but will focus on distancing with sUAVs and will take advantage of an existing room in the PI's lab with movable walls, video cameras, and a motion capture system. Each of these two research objectives could be carried out in the absence of progress from the other; however, their exploration together is natural since the gestures are conveyed by different vehicles, scaled to spaces, and the robots perform tasks which may require human involvement. This combined investigation will comprise Objective 3, which will focus on efficient signaling, incorporating the distancing work into the flight paths, and reception with users performing a variety of tasks. Project outcomes will transform close-proximity HRI by enabling sUAVs to generate communicative flight paths that are optimized based on likelihood of receipt and comfort in highly independent human-robot teams.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.