Advanced robotic cognition and capabilities for human-robot Interactive tasks in real life settings

在设计先进的机器人系统时，主要的挑战是将移动机器人所需的所有必要元素（从机电一体化到传感、计算、决策和交互模式）集成到一个工作系统中，以在现实生活中发挥有用的作用。这样的设计需要广泛的基础专业知识，通常在不同的研究实验室单独解决。舍布鲁克大学和印第安纳大学布卢明顿分校、亚利桑那州立大学和斯坦福大学之间的独特合作机会，将有可能将强大的自然语言交互、情感计算、目标语言、逻辑和规划以及认知架构的贡献整合到加拿大小组制造的先进的全方位人形机器人平台中。该平台将能够改变其高度，做手势和面部表情，通过其运动组件感知地面，并通过使用新型执行器的力传感与两只手臂和抓手与人和世界互动。它将使用声源定位、跟踪和分离系统作为预处理，用于语音识别和对话管理、目标生成和语言和非语言线索的情感评估。它还将能够计划在现实世界的高度动态和不断变化的条件下必须做什么。来自工程和认知建模角度的计算架构将在实际操作条件下使用该实验测试平台进行验证。综合结果将在国际RoboCup@Home竞赛中展示，重点是现实世界的应用以及与自动机器人在日常生活中协助人类的人机交互。本项目将资助3名加拿大科研人员，培养3名博士、1名硕士、3名本科实习生和1名研究专业人员。该项目将生产有史以来最先进的自主和互动移动机器人之一，在人机交互和智能架构方面取得突破性成果，使加拿大在机器人技术的新兴领域发挥领导作用，在机器人辅助和互动技术方面具有潜在的用途。

In designing advanced robotic systems, the main challenge is to integrate in a working system all the necessary elements (from mechatronics to sensing, computing, deciding and interacting modalities) required on a mobile robot to fulfill a useful role in real-life settings. Such a design requires a broad set of underlying expertises, usually addressed separately in distinct research laboratories. A unique collaboration opportunity between the Univ. Sherbrooke and Indiana Univ. Bloomington, Arizona State Univ. and Stanford Univ. will make it possible to integrate contributions on robust natural language interaction, affective computing, goal languages, logic and planning and cognitive architecture into an advanced omnidirectional humanoid robotic platform made by the Canadian group. This platform will be capable of changing its height, do gestures and facial expressions, feel the ground through its locomotion components and interact with people and the world with two arms and grippers through force sensing using a new type of actuators. It will use a sound source localization, tracking and separation system as pre-processing for speech recognition and dialogue manage- ment, goal generation and affective evaluation from linguistic and non-linguistic cues. It will also be capable to plan what it must do in highly dynamic and changing conditions of the real world. Computational architectures coming from engineering and cognitive modeling perspectives will be validated using this experimental testbed in realistic operating conditions. The integrated result will be demonstrated at the International RoboCup@Home  competition, focusing on real-world applications and human-machine interaction with autonomous robots assisting humans in everyday life. Three Canadian researchers will be funded in this project, training 3 Ph.D., 1 Master's, 3 undergraduate trainee and 1 research professional. This project will produce one of the most advanced autonomous and interactive mobile robot ever built, with groundbreaking results on human-robot interaction and intelligent architectures, making Canada take on a leadership role in new emerging fields of robotics with potential uses in robotic assistive and interactive technologies.