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

在过去的50年里，工业机器人在自动化机器时代树立了重要的里程碑，在制造业中，自动化机器用来取代人类执行可重复的危险工作。然而，在本世纪，专业和家用移动服务机器人在工业和日常生活环境中都扮演着人类对应者和照顾者的关键角色。移动服务机器人不仅在最大限度地减少动手任务方面取代人类，而且还与人类合作，刺激他们专注于认知要求高的任务。然而，首先也是最重要的问题是如何使移动服务机器人能够在不对人类造成危险的情况下与人类一起工作。此外，我们希望在人类的身体安全和心理舒适得到完全保证的情况下，使专业和家用服务机器人能够以文化和背景可接受的方式与人类同事互动。*为了克服传统移动机器人导航系统的不足，提高移动服务机器人在人-机器人交互环境中的自主导航能力，本研究旨在开发一个社会感知机器人导航系统的统一框架，使移动服务机器人不仅能保证(1)人类的身体安全和(2)心理舒适，而且还能提高机器人在人-机器人交互环境中的(3)情境意识和(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融入到个人、一组人和人类与对象交互的建模和表示中来推进机器人感知。我将开发一种人类感知的运动规划和控制，允许移动机器人根据上下文和文化规范避开和接近一个人、一群人或与具有社会可接受行为的人互动，同时保证人类的身体安全和心理舒适。为了帮助移动机器人在复杂和不可预测的人类环境中运行，我将开发在线交互学习算法，并将其集成到机器人的感知、推理、运动规划和控制中，使机器人能够自主学习，以适应人类文化方面的不同社会背景和情景。*本研究计划的最终目标是通过巩固机器人导航来增加人类对移动服务机器人的信任，以确保人类的身体安全和心理舒适，并通过提高具有社会和文化意识的移动机器人的自主性来提高人类在认知层面的表现。这一研究计划不仅将创造一种新的生产技术，为移动机器人技术的现状产生新的知识，而且还将为加拿大高科技就业市场培养机器人专家。

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.