CAREER: Advancing Physical Human-Robot Interaction through Intuitive Sensorimotor Communication

职业：通过直观的感觉运动通信推进物理人机交互

• 批准号: 2046552
• 负责人: Yun Song
• 金额: $ 53.89万
• 依托单位: Missouri University of Science and Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-01 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2046552&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Advancing; Physical; Human; Robot

In the near future, robotic systems will collaborate closely with human partners to complete shared tasks such as materials handling in manufacturing and patient care in clinical settings. To ensure safe and effective interaction, the robotic partner must interpret and understand the human partner's goals and intent, as communicated through various information channels, including physical interaction. The human partner must also be able to interpret and understand the robot's intended actions. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project aims to understand how a human and a robot can communicate each other’s intent through impedance modulation at a single point of physical contact. The project will use this knowledge to develop a robotic system that interacts safely and intuitively with a human partner as they walk "hand-in-hand" in a collaborative path-following scenario (assisted walking). By analyzing the forces at the hands and consequent movements of the arms during different leader/follower scenarios, specific impedance modulation strategies of humans will be identified that enable natural human-robot interaction through their arms and hands. The project will advance the NSF mission to promote the progress of science and to advance national health, prosperity, and welfare by advancing a fundamental understanding of novel communication strategies made possible through the physical coupling of human and embodied machine intelligences. This project will also provide early exposure and training opportunities on physically interactive robots to the public, particularly to students in STEM programs and to K-12 educators.This work focuses on intent communication and the role of the mechanical impedance of the human arm during collaborative, physical human-robot interactions. The project will measure human arm impedance during guided partner walking with the human acting either as leader or follower. In partner walking, one agent guides the other through a desired path at some desired speed. The robot will apply small transient force perturbations occasionally to the human arm and monitor the resulting arm motions to infer limb impedance. The project team will then identify the contextual modulation of arm impedance during situations where the human assumes the role of the leader and in situations where the human is the follower. By doing so, the project team seeks to discern physical communication strategies underlying effective and intuitive physical human-robot collaborations. Finally, the project will quantify the effectiveness of the identified intent communication strategies by implementing them on a mobile robot that simulates human partnered walking. The experiments will be performed using a force-controlled over-ground interactive robot that walks together with a human in a large room monitored by a 3D motion capture system. The research and educational work of this project will lay the foundation for implementing intuitive physical communication between humans and robots.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.

在不久的将来，机器人系统将与人类合作伙伴密切合作，以完成共同的任务，例如制造中的材料处理和临床环境中的患者护理。为了确保安全和有效的互动，机器人合作伙伴必须解释和理解人类合作伙伴的目标和意图，通过各种信息渠道，包括物理互动。人类伙伴还必须能够解释和理解机器人的预期动作。这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）项目旨在了解人类和机器人如何通过物理接触的单点阻抗调制来传达彼此的意图。该项目将利用这些知识开发一个机器人系统，当他们在协作路径跟踪场景（辅助步行）中“手拉手”行走时，该系统将安全直观地与人类伙伴进行交互。通过分析在不同的领导者/追随者的情况下，在手中的力量和随之而来的运动的手臂，特定的阻抗调制策略的人类将被确定，使自然的人机交互通过他们的手臂和手。该项目将推进NSF的使命，以促进科学的进步和促进国家的健康，繁荣和福利，通过推进对人类和具体机器智能的物理耦合所实现的新颖通信策略的基本理解。 该项目还将为公众提供物理交互机器人的早期接触和培训机会，特别是STEM项目的学生和K-12教育工作者。这项工作的重点是意图沟通和人类手臂的机械阻抗在协作过程中的作用，物理人机交互。该项目将在引导伙伴行走期间测量人类手臂阻抗，人类充当领导者或追随者。在伙伴行走中，一个智能体引导另一个智能体以期望的速度通过期望的路径。机器人将偶尔对人类手臂施加小的瞬态力扰动，并监测由此产生的手臂运动以推断肢体阻抗。然后，项目团队将确定在人类担任领导者角色的情况下以及在人类是追随者的情况下手臂阻抗的上下文调制。 通过这样做，项目团队试图辨别有效和直观的物理人机协作背后的物理通信策略。最后，该项目将量化的有效性，确定的意图沟通策略，实现他们的移动的机器人，模拟人类合作行走。实验将使用力控制的地面交互式机器人进行，该机器人与人类一起在由3D运动捕捉系统监控的大房间中行走。该项目的研究和教育工作将为实现人类和机器人之间的直观物理通信奠定基础。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影响审查标准进行评估而被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Guiding a Human Follower with Interaction Forces: Implications on Physical Human-Robot Interaction

• DOI: 10.1109/biorob52689.2022.9925337
• 发表时间: 2022-08
• 期刊: 2022 9th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob)
• 作者: George L. Holmes;Keyri Moreno Bonnett;Amy Costa;Devin M. Burns;Yun Seong Song