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: 2308654
• 负责人: Melisa Orta Martinez
• 金额: $ 84.61万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon 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=2308654&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.

建筑物后的城市搜索和救援行动（例如，房屋或公寓楼）倒塌面临着复杂的布局，具有未知的危险，从火灾到通电的电线，再到额外的塌方的可能性。这些未知因素和安全问题导致缓慢而深思熟虑的搜索过程，尽管时间是救援行动成功的最大预测因素之一。确定家具或碎片为幸存者创造“空洞口袋”的区域，并为救援人员检查结构的安全性是最费力和最耗时的任务。具有不同能力的机器人组可以减少搜索区域并提高人类操作员的安全性，从而大大有助于在这些环境中的搜索工作。该奖项支持研究开发异构机器人团队，以帮助这些搜索和救援行动。研究人员将创造方法，让不同大小、形状和能力的机器人在共生团队中一起工作，并帮助彼此在崩溃的环境中移动。可以通过间隙的网球大小的小型机器人将由植物启发的生长机器人运送到重要的搜索区域，较小的机器人将帮助较大的生长机器人转向，感知和交流。从建立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构机器人团队的发展，使用团队成员之间的互惠互利的物理交互，共享现有的能力，并建立新的。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交互以创建新的共生能力。虽然以前的工作集中在不同能力的机器人如何提高团队绩效相比，同质的团队，很少有工作已经证明了如何异构机器人可以增强彼此的能力，当他们一起工作。该项目直接研究了如何设计这些共生行为，以便异构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，这项工作将突出i）软生长机器人如何作为系绳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，传感和通信模块来扩展不断增长的机器人的运动范围和能力。研究人员将对各种潜在的交互方式进行原型设计和研究，同时确定和设计那些最能提高团队在模拟非结构化区域中移动能力的交互方式。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互动，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。这些成果将有助于建立机器人团队，提高倒塌建筑物中搜索和救援团队的安全性和成功率。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。