W-HTF-RL: Collaborative Research: Improving the Future of Retail and Warehouse Workers with Upper Limb Disabilities via Perceptive and Adaptive Soft Wearable Robots

该项目将研究软可穿戴机器人的建模，感知和控制，为老年工人和身体残疾的工人提供物理援助和技能培训，涉及拾取，放置和装配任务。如果成功，该项目将提高他们的就业，包容性，并融入与零售，仓库和制造业相关的工作。 据估计，这项技术可以直接使美国近2000万因神经和肌肉骨骼疾病而导致上肢损伤的人受益。该项目的长期目标是提高残疾人的工作质量、生产力和就业，残疾人是美国最大的少数民族和未开发的劳动力。为此，该项目将部署人工智能驱动的软辅助机器人来支持工人，并了解对经济和政策制定的影响。拟议的工作有可能通过扩大残疾人在劳动力队伍中的参与，为国家经济增长和健康做出贡献。对经济影响的评估将首次以计量经济学数据为基础，了解人工智能和机器人驱动的增强对生产力和劳动力市场的影响，并特别关注代表性不足的残疾人群体。该项目汇集了多个学科，包括软机器人，计算机视觉，学习和控制，职业治疗，工人培训和劳动经济学。这个融合的研究团队代表了与罗格斯新泽西医学院、纽约大学和辅助设备制造商的合作。团队和项目活动的结构是为了实现多个收敛目标和交付成果，包括：1）一个轻量级和投诉软穿戴机器人与人类工人之间的交互模型; 2）一个交互式视觉感知框架，该框架能够在动态工作空间的语义3D地图中进行多模态意图检测和动作监控，并为协作机器人操作提供上下文视觉反馈; 3）用于通过成本函数学习和模型预测控制来转移所展示的技能的框架，该模型预测控制具有用于外骨骼的在线运动和阻抗适应的感知反馈集成; 4）职业治疗师和上肢残疾人的培训计划将涉及多方面的培训，采取多管齐下的战略，提高对辅助机器人的范围和有效性的认识和了解，并改善对它们在以下方面的使用的看法：协同工作; 5）利用关于职业能力要求的联邦数据，增进对辅助技术经济学的理解，然后利用这些估计数以及辅助技术的生产率结果，构建这些技术的一系列成本/效益估计数;和6）基于证据的政策方法，使用来自实地实验、访谈、与雇主和雇员的焦点小组，以确定在工作场所采用和接受辅助可穿戴技术的态度，障碍和最佳做法。该项目由人类技术前沿跨部门计划的未来工作资助，以促进对相互依赖的人类的更深入的基本理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估，被认为值得支持。影响审查标准。

This project will investigate modeling, perception, and control of soft wearable robots to provide physical assistance and skill training for older workers and workers with physical disabilities in jobs involving picking, placing, and assembly tasks. If successful, the project will enhance their employment, inclusion, and integration in work that is relevant to retail, warehouse, and manufacturing. It is estimated that this technology can directly benefit nearly 20 million people in the U.S. with upper limb impairments due to neurological and musculoskeletal disorders. The long term goal of the project is to improve the quality of work, productivity, and employment of people with disabilities, who are the nation’s largest minority and untapped labor force. To do so, the project will deploy artificial intelligence-powered, soft assistive robots to support workers and understand the resulting impact on economics and policy making. The proposed work has the potential to contribute to national economic growth and health by broadening participation of people with disabilities in the workforce. The assessment of economic impacts will provide the first econometric data-driven understanding of the productivity and labor market effects of artificial intelligence- and robotics-driven augmentation, with a specific focus on the underrepresented population of individuals with disabilities. This project brings together multiple disciplines, including soft robotics, computer vision, learning and control, occupational therapy, worker training and labor economics. This convergent research team represents a collaboration with Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, New York University, and assistive device manufacturers. The team and project activities are structured to achieve multiple convergent goals and deliverables, including: 1) A model of interactions between a lightweight and complainant soft wearable robot with human workers; 2) An interactive visual perception framework that enables multimodal intention detection and action monitoring in a semantic 3D map of the dynamic workspace and provides in-context visual feedback for collaborative robot manipulation; 3) A framework for the transfer of demonstrated skills through cost function learning and model predictive control with perceptual feedback integration for online movement and impedance adaptation of exoskeletons; 4) Training programs for occupational therapists and people with upper-limb disabilities will entail a multi-pronged strategy to enhance awareness and knowledge regarding the scope and effectiveness of assistive robots and improve perception towards their use in collaborative workspaces; 5) Increased understanding the economics of assistive technologies using federal data on occupational ability requirements and then using these estimates in conjunction with productivity results on assistive technologies to construct a range of cost/benefit estimates of these technologies; and 6) An evidence-based policy approach that uses quantitative and qualitative data from field experiments, interviews, and focus groups with employers and employees to determine attitudes, barriers, and best practices for adoption and acceptance of assistive wearable technologies in the workplace. This project has been funded by the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier cross-directorate program to promote deeper basic understanding of the interdependent human-technology partnership in work contexts by advancing design of intelligent work technologies that operate in harmony with human workers.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.