CAREER: Autonomous Reorganization of Cooperative Robotic Teams for Robustness

该项目的目标是为协作机器人团队提供有关其组织结构和能力的适当知识，以及有效的推理机制，使他们能够在面对不断变化的环境和团队能力时“即时”重组，以更高效地实现其整体团队目标。目标是将组织推理作为构建高度健壮的协作机器人团队的新方法的关键组成部分。为了实现这一目标，必须将新的组织知识和推理技术纳入设计和开发现实世界协作机器人系统的实用方法和工具中。本研究的技术目标将是：(1)开发一个团队组织模型，描述组织概念，如目标、角色和个体团队成员是如何相关的；(2)开发策略、技术和算法，以发现何时需要重组，以及有效的重组技术，以使团队达到目标；(3)在自动化工具集中编纂这些方法和技术，以确保捕获组织知识并将其转换为与有效推理技术兼容的形式。在研究中开发的理论、技术、方法和工具将用于加强多智能体和协作机器人系统的本科和研究生课程。此外，还计划了一系列旨在影响非特定项目成员的活动，重点是小学到高中的大学预科学生。我们计划参加几个夏季研讨会，以激励大学预科学生选择科学和技术专业，并接触到特定的代表性不足的群体。

The objective of this project is to provide teams of cooperative robots with the appropriate knowledge of their organizational structure and capabilities, along with efficient reasoning mechanisms, to allow them to reorganize "on-the-fly" to achieve their overall team goals more efficiently and effectively in the face of a changing environment and team capabilities. The goal is to establish organizational reasoning as a key component in a new approach to building highly robust cooperative robotic teams. To realize this goal, the new organizational knowledge and reasoning techniques must be incorporated into practical methods and tools for designing and developing real world cooperative robotic systems. The technological objectives of this research will be to (1) develop a team organizational model that describes how organizational concepts such as goals, roles, and individual team members are related, (2) develop strategies, techniques, and algorithms for discovering when reorganization is required as well as efficient techniques for reorganizing to allow teams to reach their goals, and (3) codify these methods and techniques in an automated toolset to ensure that the organizational knowledge is captured and transformed into a form compatible with efficient reasoning techniques. The theories, techniques, methods, and tools developed in research will be used to enhance both undergraduate as well as graduate curriculum in multiagent and cooperative robotic systems. Also, a series of activities designed to impact persons not specifically part of the project are planned with a strong emphasis on pre-college students from elementary to high school. We plan to participate in several summer workshops to motivate pre-college students to select science and technology majors and to reach specific underrepresented groups.