CAREER: Robots for Everyone, Everywhere

计算机设备在日常生活中无处不在，笔记本电脑、智能手机和许多其他个人和家用电子设备使人们越来越容易找到解决任何计算问题的方法。然而，当涉及到现实世界中的身体问题时，个人技术远远落后：典型的用户在日常生活中往往很少或根本没有与机器人互动。该项目的研究旨在解决未满足的需求，创造必要的技术，使机器人技术像今天的计算机一样无处不在；通过机器人创造的民主化，减少进入壁垒，我们可以在发展中领域推进技术进步，为服务不足的社区带来技术进步的机会，并激励和鼓励学生在全国和世界各地进一步接受教育。该项目将创造出用户友好的工具，允许任何具有任何背景或专业知识的人设计定制的、个性化的机器人。这项研究将包括开发新的制造工艺，使设计的机器人能够按需制造。此外，将研究新的算法和框架，以扩展这些设备分布式网络的自主控制。该项目的目标是让每个人最终都能说，对于任何需要解决的个人体力任务，“有一个机器人可以解决这个问题。”提出的研究计划将解决普适个人机器人的设计、制造和控制三个平行推力下的理论和系统问题。无处不在的网络物理系统必须提供唯一指定的功能，因此该项目将研究设计自动化算法，该算法从非专业用户提供的高级任务描述中生成可制造的规格，将验证和确认结果反馈到用户在环和自动优化中。这些设计必须在个人规模上实现为集成机电机械，为此，本研究将探索快速制造工具和工艺，使用坚固的机械材料和集成的机电超材料进行减法制造，并开发用于增材制造的离散微制造有源元件。最后，这些机器人必须被控制；该项目将研究集成系统级的通用通信和控制子任务，利用个人机器人的普遍性来开发分布式定位、通信感知运动规划和机动性增强网络的算法和协议。

The everyday world is pervaded by computational devices laptops, smart phones, and many other personal and household electronic devices make it increasingly easier to find solutions to any computational problem one may have. However when it comes to physical problems in the real world, personal technology lags far behind: typical users often have minimal to no interaction with robots in daily life. The research in this project aims to address unmet needs, creating the technology necessary to make robotics as ubiquitous as computing is today; by democratizing access to robot creation reducing barriers to entry we can advance technology in developing fields, bring opportunities for technical advancement to under-served communities, and excite and encourage students to further their education throughout the country and the world. The project will result in creation of user-friendly tools that allow anyone with any background or expertise to design custom, personalized robots. The research will include development of new fabrication processes that enable the on-demand fabrication of the designed robots. Also, new algorithms and frameworks will be investigated for expanding autonomous control of distributed networks of these devices. The goal of the project is for everyone to eventually be able to say, for any personal physical task that needs to be solved, "there's a robot for that."The proposed research plan will address theory and systems issues under the three parallel thrusts of design, fabrication, and control for pervasive personal robots. Ubiquitous cyber-physical systems must deliver uniquely specified functionality, and so this program will investigate design automation algorithms that generate manufacturable specifications from high-level task descriptions provided by inexpert users, feeding back verification and validation results into user-in-the-loop and automated optimization. These designs must then be realized into integrated electromechanical machines at a personal scale, for which this research will explore rapid manufacturing tools and processes that use robust mechanical materials and integrated electromechanical metamaterials for subtractive manufacturing and develop discrete microfabricated active elements for additive manufacturing. Finally, these robots must be controlled; this program will investigate universal communications and control subtasks at an integrated system level, using the intended ubiquity of personal robots to develop algorithms and protocols for distributed localization, communication-aware motion planning, and mobility-enhanced networking.