Collaborative Research: Increasing Capabilities of Heterogeneous Robot Teams through Mutually Beneficial Physical Interactions

协作研究：通过互利的物理交互提高异构机器人团队的能力

• 批准号: 2308653
• 负责人: Laura Blumenschein
• 金额: $ 37.39万
• 依托单位: Purdue University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-10-01 至 2026-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2308653&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Increasing; Capabilities; Heterogeneous

Urban Search and Rescue operations after a structure (e.g., a house or apartment building) collapse face complex layouts with unknown hazards, from fires to energized electrical wiring to the possibility of additional cave-ins. These unknowns and safety concerns lead to a slow and considered search process, even though time is one of the greatest predictors of success in rescue operations. Identifying areas where furniture or debris create “void pockets” for survivors and checking the safety of the structure for rescuers are some of the most laborious and time consuming tasks. Groups of robots with different abilities could reduce the areas to search and improve safety for human operators, significantly helping search efforts in these environments. This award supports research into the development of heterogeneous robot teams to aid in these search and rescue operations. The researchers will create methods for robots of different sizes, shapes, and abilities to physically work together in symbiotic teams and help each other move around collapsed environments. Small tennis-ball-sized robots that can fit through gaps will be delivered to important search areas by plant-inspired growing robots, and the smaller robot will help the larger growing robot steer, sense, and communicate. The lessons learned from building and studying this symbiotic robot team will help future designs for physically symbiotic robots and will serve as a starting point for developing new search and rescue tools. This research investigates the development of symbiotic heterogeneous robot teams which use mutually beneficial physical interactions between team members to share existing capabilities and build new ones. The researchers will leverage two existing robot architectures, soft growing robots and microrobots, with complementary capabilities in the area of navigation and exploration of unstructured environments, and will study how physical interactions between these robots may be designed to create new symbiotic capabilities. While prior work has focused on how robots of differing capabilities can improve team performance compared to homogeneous teams, little work has demonstrated how heterogeneous robots may augment each other's capabilities when they function together. This project directly investigates how these symbiotic behaviors may be designed so that heterogeneous robot teams can be greater than the sum of their parts, with a specific target of creating teams to search disaster environments. In particular, the work will highlight how i) soft growing robots can serve as tethers and structures to extend the reach of microrobots and ii) how microrobots with different payloads can act as changeable actuation, sensing, and communication modules for expanding a growing robot’s range of motion and capabilities. The researchers will prototype and study a diverse range of potential interaction styles while identifying and designing those interactions that will best improve the ability of the team to move in simulated unstructured areas. Overall, the research investigates interactions between highly diverse soft and rigid robots, bridging the gaps between these fields to explore how benefits from each can be leveraged to create more effective robotic teams that can better move around the unstructured world. These results will build towards robot teams which can improve safety and success of search and rescue teams in collapsed buildings.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.

在建筑物（如房屋或公寓楼）倒塌后，城市搜救行动面临着复杂的布局和未知的危险，从火灾到通电的电线，再到可能发生的塌方。这些未知因素和安全问题导致搜索过程缓慢且经过深思熟虑，尽管时间是救援行动成功与否的最大预测因素之一。确定家具或碎片为幸存者创造“空隙”的区域，并为救援人员检查建筑物的安全性，是最费力、最耗时的任务之一。不同能力的机器人组可以减少搜索面积，提高人类操作员的安全性，极大地帮助在这些环境中的搜索工作。该奖项支持异构机器人团队的开发研究，以协助这些搜索和救援行动。研究人员将为不同大小、形状和能力的机器人创造方法，让它们在共生团队中一起工作，并帮助彼此在坍塌的环境中移动。受植物启发的生长机器人将把网球大小的小型机器人送到重要的搜索区域，而较小的机器人将帮助较大的生长机器人引导、感知和交流。从构建和研究这个共生机器人团队中吸取的经验教训将有助于未来物理共生机器人的设计，并将作为开发新的搜索和救援工具的起点。本研究探讨了共生异质机器人团队的发展，该团队使用团队成员之间互利的物理交互来共享现有能力并建立新的能力。研究人员将利用两种现有的机器人架构，软生长机器人和微型机器人，在导航和探索非结构化环境方面具有互补能力，并将研究如何设计这些机器人之间的物理相互作用，以创造新的共生能力。虽然先前的工作主要集中在不同能力的机器人如何提高团队绩效，而不是同质团队，但很少有工作证明异质机器人在一起工作时如何增强彼此的能力。该项目直接研究如何设计这些共生行为，以便异质机器人团队可以大于其部分的总和，并以创建团队来搜索灾难环境为特定目标。特别是，这项工作将强调如何i)软生长机器人可以作为绳索和结构来扩展微型机器人的范围；ii)具有不同有效载荷的微型机器人如何作为可变的驱动、传感和通信模块，以扩大生长机器人的运动范围和能力。研究人员将建立原型并研究各种潜在的交互风格，同时确定和设计那些最能提高团队在模拟非结构化区域移动能力的交互。总体而言，该研究调查了高度多样化的软机器人和刚性机器人之间的相互作用，弥合了这些领域之间的差距，探索如何利用每个领域的优势来创建更有效的机器人团队，从而更好地在非结构化世界中移动。这些结果将建立在机器人团队的基础上，这可以提高在倒塌建筑物中搜救团队的安全性和成功率。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。