Towards A Unified Framework of Socially Aware Robot Navigation: From Human Physical Safety and Psychological Comfort to Robots' Contextual and Cultural Awareness

工业机器人在自动化机器时代树立了重要的里程碑，用于取代人类在制造业中进行可重复和危险的工作超过50年。然而，在这个世纪，专业和家用移动的服务机器人在工业和日常生活环境中扮演着人类同行和照顾者的关键角色。移动的服务机器人不仅可以取代人类减少他们的动手任务，而且还可以与人类一起工作，刺激他们专注于认知要求高的任务。然而，首要的也是最重要的问题是如何使移动的服务机器人能够在人类周围工作或与人类一起工作，而不会对人类造成危险。此外，我们期望在完全保证人类身体安全和心理舒适的情况下，使专业和家庭服务机器人以文化和上下文可接受的方式与人类同事进行交互。** 为了克服传统移动的机器人导航系统存在的缺点，增强移动的服务机器人在人机交互环境中的自主导航能力，本研究计画旨在发展一个社会知觉机器人导航系统的统一架构，使移动的服务机器人不仅能保证（1）人类的身体安全和（2）心理舒适，而且能增进机器人的（3）人-机器人交互环境中的语境意识和（4）文化意识。我将通过将社会时空人类特征和人类社会习俗纳入个人，群体和人类与对象交互的建模和表示来推进机器人感知。我将开发一个人类感知的运动规划和控制，使移动的机器人，以避免和接近一个人，一群人，或人与物体互动的社会可接受的行为，根据他们的上下文和文化规范，同时保证人类的身体安全和心理舒适。为了帮助移动的机器人在复杂和不可预测的人类环境中运行，我将开发和集成在线交互式学习算法到机器人的感知，推理，运动规划和控制，使机器人能够自主学习，以适应不同的社会背景和人类文化的情况。** 本研究计划的最终目标是通过巩固机器人导航与保证人类的身体安全和心理舒适来增加人类对移动的服务机器人的信任，并通过提高具有社会和文化意识的移动的机器人的自主性来提高人类在认知水平上的表现。这项研究计划不仅将使一种新的生产技术，并产生新的知识，以移动的机器人技术的当前状态，但也有助于培训加拿大高科技就业市场的机器人专家。

Industrial robots have set the important milestone in the era of automated machines used to replace humans in carrying out repeatable and dangerous jobs in manufacturing over 50 years. However, in this century, professional and domestic mobile service robots play the key role as human counterparts and caregivers in both industrial and daily-life settings. Mobile service robots not only replace humans in minimizing their hands-on tasks but also work with humans to stimulate them to focus on cognitively demanding tasks. Nevertheless, the first and most important concern is how to enable mobile service robots to work around or with humans without causing them danger. Moreover, we expect to make professional and domestic service robots to interact with human co-workers in culturally and contextually acceptable manners when human physical safety and psychological comfort have been completely guaranteed. ******To overcome the existing shortcomings of conventional mobile robot navigation systems and enhance the autonomous navigability of mobile service robots in human-robot interactive environments, this research program is designed to develop a unified framework of socially aware robot navigation system enabling mobile service robots to guarantee not only (1) human physical safety and (2) psychological comfort but also to enhance the robots' (3) contextual and (4) cultural awareness in human-robot interactive environments. I will advance the robot perception by incorporating socio-spatio-temporal human characteristics and human social conventions into the modeling and representation of individuals, group of people, and humans interacting with objects. I will develop a human-aware motion planning and control allowing a mobile robot to avoid and approach a person, a group of people, or people interacting with objects with socially acceptable behaviors according to their contextual and cultural norms while guaranteeing human physical safety and psychological comfort. To help the mobile robot to operate in complex and unpredictable human environments, I will develop and integrate online interactive learning algorithms into the robot perception, reasoning, motion planning and control so that the robot is capable of autonomously learning to adapt to different social contexts and situations with respect to human culture. ******The ultimate goal of this research program is to increase human trust in mobile service robots by consolidating the robot navigation with guaranty of human physical safety and psychological comfort and enhance human performance at the cognitive level by improving autonomy of such mobile robots with social and cultural awareness. This research program will not only make a new kind of production technology and generate new knowledge to the current state of the art of mobile robotics but also contribute to training robotics experts for the Canadian high-tech job market.