FW-HTF-R/Collaborative Research: RoboChemistry: Human-Robot Collaboration for the Future of Organic Synthesis

FW-HTF-R/合作研究：RoboChemistry：人机协作打造有机合成的未来

• 批准号: 2222953
• 负责人: Daniel Szafir
• 金额: $ 59.82万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-15 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2222953&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: FW; HTF; Collaborative; Research; RoboChemistry

Chemical R&D is the backbone of countless technologies including life-saving medicines, energy harvesting and storage materials, and additive manufacturing. Chemists, who hold nearly 100,000 US jobs, face considerable risks in the workplace, leading to tens of thousands of injuries per year. Chemists must take great care to avoid chemical exposures, fires and explosions while handling the high physical and cognitive demands inherent in the laborious, manual nature of synthetic chemistry procedures. Intelligent robotic technologies could improve working conditions for chemists by reducing these risks and challenges, while accelerating the pace of chemical R&D. Robots have already revolutionized the workplace in many industries, such as manufacturing, packaging, and shipping, but most chemical R&D labs remain devoid of collaborative robotic assistance, likely due to the high number, diversity, and complexity of tasks involved in this work. Instead, chemical synthesis robots currently in development are designed to replace or displace the human chemist. The objective of this proposal is to evaluate the benefits and challenges of an alternative approach, where collaborative robots deployed in the lab work together with chemists and provide them with helpful task assistance, rather than end-to-end automation of all activities. This approach has the potential to improve laboratory safety, increase accessibility for chemists with disabilities, and increase productivity and job satisfaction for chemists. The project will also engage young women to consider STEM careers in chemistry and robotics through an afterschool workshop series that exposes them to professional chemists, roboticists, and hands-on chemistry automation experiments. Partners in this collaborative work include University of Colorado at Boulder, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and New Iridium, Inc. This project is funded by the Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier program which supports multi-disciplinary research to sustain economic competitiveness, promote worker well-being, lifelong and pervasive learning, and quality of life, and illuminate the emerging social and economic context and drivers of innovations that are shaping the future of jobs and work. To realize the vision of collaborative mobile robots that assist chemical R&D workers in order to reduce mental/physical workload while improving safety and efficiency, this project integrates three threads of research: (1) classify, model, and evaluate robotic efficacy in various chemistry procedures, (2) develop novel task planning and interaction programming for mobile robots to interact with synthetic chemists, and (3) create hardware and software solutions that ensure safe and autonomous deployment of mobile collaborative robots in unstructured laboratory environments. Weaving these three threads of research together, the project will identify scenarios in which human-robot teams may collaborate effectively on various specific subtasks of organic synthesis procedures. Chemists from New Iridium and chemist/materials scientist trainees will perform tasks representative of routine synthetic chemistry procedures in the R&D lab, both in the presence and absence of a teleoperated collaborative mobile robot performing prescribed assistive task support. The efficacy of co-robot assistance will be evaluated and quantified by a combination of objective measures associated with the procedure (time to completion, reaction yield, number and or severity of errors, etc.) and subjective measures of the chemists’ experience with the robotic assistant, including survey-based assessment of their cognitive and physical workload, and sense of personal safety and efficiency. The feedback loop between roboticists and chemists will allow the team to iteratively identify and refine collaboration scenarios for chemist-robot pairs that enhance safety, productivity, accessibility, and job satisfaction for chemical R&D workers. The newly developed open-source software underpinning these collaboration scenarios will enable any laboratory in possession of an appropriate robot to replicate, use and adapt these scenarios in their own workplaces. Ultimately, this research will make fundamental contributions to both chemistry and robotics while helping to unite these two historically disconnected fields.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.

化学研发是无数技术的支柱，包括救生药物、能量收集和储存材料以及增材制造。拥有近10万个美国工作岗位的化学家在工作场所面临相当大的风险，每年导致数万人受伤。化学家必须非常小心，以避免化学品暴露，火灾和爆炸，同时处理高物理和认知的要求，在合成化学过程的费力，手工性质固有的。智能机器人技术可以通过减少这些风险和挑战来改善化学家的工作条件，同时加快化学研发的步伐。机器人已经彻底改变了许多行业的工作场所，例如制造，包装和运输，但大多数化学研发实验室仍然缺乏协作机器人辅助，这可能是由于这项工作中涉及的任务数量多，多样性和复杂性。相反，目前正在开发的化学合成机器人旨在取代或取代人类化学家。该提案的目的是评估替代方法的好处和挑战，其中部署在实验室中的协作机器人与化学家一起工作，并为他们提供有用的任务协助，而不是所有活动的端到端自动化。这种方法有可能提高实验室安全性，增加残疾化学家的无障碍环境，并提高化学家的生产力和工作满意度。该项目还将通过一系列课后研讨会让年轻女性考虑化学和机器人领域的STEM职业，让她们接触专业化学家、机器人专家和动手化学自动化实验。这项合作工作的合作伙伴包括位于博尔德的科罗拉多大学、位于查佩尔山的北卡罗来纳州大学和新铱公司。该项目由人类技术前沿计划的未来工作资助，该计划支持多学科研究，以维持经济竞争力，促进工人福祉，终身和普及学习以及生活质量，并阐明新兴的社会和经济背景以及正在塑造就业和工作未来的创新驱动力。为了实现协作移动的机器人的愿景，帮助化学研发&工作者，以减少精神/体力工作量，同时提高安全性和效率，该项目整合了三个研究线索：（1）对机器人在各种化学过程中的功效进行分类、建模和评估，（2）为移动的机器人开发新的任务规划和交互编程以与合成化学家交互，以及（3）创建硬件和软件解决方案，以确保移动的协作机器人在非结构化实验室环境中的安全和自主部署。将这三条研究线索编织在一起，该项目将确定人机团队可以在有机合成过程的各种特定子任务上进行有效合作的场景。来自New Iridium的化学家和化学家/材料科学家学员将在研发实验室中执行代表常规合成化学程序的任务，无论是否存在远程操作的协作移动的机器人执行规定的辅助任务支持。将通过与程序相关的客观指标（完成时间、反应产率、错误数量和/或严重程度等）的组合来评估和量化协作机器人辅助的有效性。以及对化学家使用机器人助手的经验的主观测量，包括对他们的认知和身体工作量的基于调查的评估，以及个人安全感和效率。机器人专家和化学家之间的反馈回路将使团队能够迭代地识别和改进化学家-机器人对的协作场景，从而提高化学研发人员的安全性、生产力、可访问性和工作满意度。支持这些协作场景的新开发的开源软件将使任何拥有适当机器人的实验室能够在自己的工作场所复制、使用和调整这些场景。最终，这项研究将为化学和机器人技术做出根本性的贡献，同时有助于将这两个历史上互不相关的领域结合起来。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。