CAREER: Human-Inspired Multi-Robot Navigation

室内移动机器人正日益成为我们生活的一部分。无论是Roombas在打扫地板，还是Kiva机器人在仓库里运送零件，机器人都应该能够在成功完成任务的同时避免碰撞。然而，尽管现有的运动规划技术已经成熟，学习和大数据技术最近兴起，但移动机器人仍然缺乏人类的决策能力。这个学院早期职业发展(CALEAR)项目将开发高效和社交智能的多机器人导航技术，塑造下一代移动机器人，这些机器人可以推理它们的行为如何影响场景中的其他代理，并采取相应的行动，就像人类所做的那样。由此产生的进步将有助于成功部署可以无缝集成到我们的家庭和工作空间中的“会思考”的移动机器人。这项研究跨越了不同的领域，包括运动规划、机器学习和强化学习。由于它的跨学科性质和与现代技术的相关性，它是激励下一代学生和向更广泛的社区展示STEM领域的理想选择，这些领域以机器人和人工智能的渐进应用为基础。该项目包括针对K-12、本科生和研究生的综合教育、研究和推广活动，促进女性和代表性不足的少数民族的高水平参与，以及开发与机器人相关的新课程和更新课程。该项目将在多机器人导航算法的设计中引入人类启发的范式转变。人类知道何时必须礼貌，何时屈从于他人，何时采取果断行动，高效地执行复杂的导航任务，而不会发生碰撞。该项目的目标是通过利用公开的人与人交互数据和我们自己的人与机器人交互实验，以及将运动规划与学习技术相结合，在移动机器人上实现这种行为。具体地说，该项目将侧重于两个相互关联的研究推进，这将导致：i)利用人类轨迹数据集学习人类在不同交互场景中采取什么控制措施的新算法；ii)利用学习到的控制来增强现有本地导航规划者的新方法，以使其能够做出类似人类的决策；iii)用于多机器人导航的强化学习框架，其将机器人导航策略推广到未知的交互场景；iv)涉及人与机器人之间交互的新数据集，以及随后v)用于人类居住环境中的多机器人导航的新算法。这项工作将在模拟和真实机器人上进行评估，相关算法和数据集将公开提供，以促进机器人学和人工智能社区的进一步研究和探索。如果成功，这个项目将塑造下一代室内移动机器人，可以丰富我们的生活和工作质量，并有可能通过其综合教育计划显著造福社会。该项目由跨部门的机器人基础研究计划支持，由工程总监(ENG)和计算机和信息科学与工程(CEISE)共同管理和资助。该项目由CEISE/IIS、已建立的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)和ENG/CMMI共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Indoor mobile robots are increasingly becoming a part of our lives. Whether there are Roombas cleaning the floor or Kiva robots delivering parts in warehouses, the robots should be able to avoid collisions while successfully completing their tasks. However, despite the maturity of existing motion planning techniques and the recent rise of learning and big data techniques, mobile robots still lack the decision making ability of humans. This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) project will develop techniques for efficient and socially intelligent multi-robot navigation, shaping the next generation of mobile robots that can reason about how their actions influence the other agents present in the scene and act accordingly, much like humans do. The resulting advances will facilitate the successful deployment of "thinking" mobile robots that can be seamlessly integrated into our homes and workspaces. This research spans across different areas, including motion planning, machine learning, and reinforcement learning. With its interdisciplinary nature and relevance for modern technologies, it is ideal for inspiring the next generation of students and exposing the broader community to STEM areas couched in progressive applications in robotics and AI. The project includes integrated educational, research, and outreach activities for K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, promoting a high level of participation by women and underrepresented minorities, and developing new courses and updated curricula related to robotics.This project will introduce a human-inspired paradigm shift in the design of multi-robot navigation algorithms. Humans know when they have to be polite and yield to others and when to take decisive actions, efficiently performing complex navigation tasks without collisions. The objective of this project is to enable such behavior on mobile robots by leveraging publicly available human-human interaction data and our own human-robot interaction experiments along with coupling motion planning with learning techniques. Specifically, the project will focus on two two inter-related research thrusts that will lead to i) new algorithms that take advantage of human trajectory datasets to learn what controls humans take in different interaction scenarios; ii) new approaches that enhance existing local navigation planners with the learned controls to enable human-like decision making; iii) a reinforcement learning framework for multi-robot navigation that generalizes robot navigation policies to unknown interactions scenarios; iv) new datasets involving interactions between humans and robots, and subsequently v) new algorithms for multi-robot navigation in human-populated environments. This work will be evaluated both in simulation and on real robots, and related algorithms and datasets will be made publicly available to facilitate further research and exploration by the robotics and AI community. If successful, this project will shape the next generation of indoor mobile robots that can enrich our quality of life and work, and has the potential to significantly benefit society through its integrated education plan.This project is supported by the cross-directorate Foundational Research in Robotics program, jointly managed and funded by the Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). This project is jointly funded by CISE/IIS, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and ENG/CMMI.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.