Towards Autonomous Collaborative Tasks in Robotics

迈向机器人自主协作任务

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-05062
• 负责人: Suleiman, Wael
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: Université de Sherbrooke
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=717517
• 关键词: Towards; Autonomous; Collaborative; Tasks; Robotics

My overarching goal is fostering collaborative robots operating in real-life settings in fields as diverse as autonomous multi-robot systems, collaborative human-robot tasks for industrial or rehabilitation purposes. Collaborative robotics is one of the most active research fields nowadays, it is one of the technologies that are expected to address a looming global shortage of experienced workers in the next 10 years. Such kind of collaboration can take several forms, for instance, a collaboration between a team of robots or a collaboration between a human and a robot. In both cases, the synchronization and action coordination between the agents are two difficult problems to consider. Moreover, even though existing algorithms in robotics can efficiently deal with well- to partially-structured environments, unstructured and dynamic environments are still considered very challenging. This is mainly true when the robots must collaborate in a team to achieve a task or operate around or physically interact with humans. Therefore, developing techniques and methods for teams of robots that are able to efficiently operate in real, unstructured and dynamic environments in real-time alongside humans is of most importance in order to have useful robotics systems operating in real-life settings. My objective in the current proposal is studying two key collaborative scenarios that involve two robotics sectors which are expected to grow at an astounding rate in the next 5 years, to reach 3.9 billion and 4.28 billion USD respectively, those sectors are humanoid and collaborative industrial robots. The first scenario involves a team of two humanoid robots cooperating to transport an object in an unstructured and dynamic environment, while the second one deals with identifying human factors (physical and behavioral) in cooperative tasks with a collaborative industrial robot. To achieve this proposal objective, I plan to start by investigating those two challenging research problems in order to come up with new and practical control and motion planning approaches to efficiently solve them. Studying those collaborative tasks will certainly help us understand the main challenging issues underlying a collaborative task, and furthermore provide valuable insights into the generalization of the developed approaches to other collaborative tasks and enhancing the synergy between a robot and its operator. The collaborative robots will reshape and reinvent the conventional role of robotics in manufacturing, hence paving the way for the new revolution of Industry 4.0. The aim of this proposal is two-fold: I)- advancing humanoid robotics field and putting Canada on the map for humanoid robotics technology, II)- training highly qualified personnel with advanced state-of-the-art collaborative industrial robots (cobots) to support the increasing needs of Canadian companies for robotics experts in the field of cobots.

我的首要目标是培养在现实生活中操作的协作机器人，如自主多机器人系统、用于工业或康复目的的人机协作任务等领域。协作机器人是当今最活跃的研究领域之一，它是有望解决未来10年全球经验丰富的工人短缺问题的技术之一。这种协作可以采取几种形式，例如，机器人团队之间的协作或人与机器人之间的协作。在这两种情况下，智能体之间的同步和动作协调是两个难以考虑的问题。此外，尽管现有的机器人算法可以有效地处理良好到部分结构化的环境，但非结构化和动态环境仍然被认为是非常具有挑战性的。当机器人必须在团队中合作完成任务或在人类周围操作或与人类进行物理互动时，这主要是正确的。因此，为机器人团队开发技术和方法，使其能够在真实、非结构化和动态的环境中与人类一起实时有效地操作，这对于在现实环境中运行有用的机器人系统至关重要。