NRI-Small: Collaborative Research: Addressing Clutter and Uncertainty for Robotic Manipulation in Human Environments

该项目的长期目标是开发与人类共享工作空间的个人机器人。为了实现家庭中个人机器人的目标，机器人必须适应人类的生活空间，而不是相反。不幸的是，大多数人类的生活空间在机器人看来都是杂乱无序的。这些“杂乱”中的大部分实际上是结构，但是是人类的结构，而不是机器人的结构。在这个修订后的项目中提出的初步工作涉及在混乱和不确定性存在下的机器人操作的初步工作。演示任务是人与机器人共存的典型例子：共用一台冰箱。机器人必须能够从冰箱中取出指定的物品，这些物品也可能被人类接触和改变。我们将基于以下原则开发解决方案的开端：此类操作任务可以通过分层的两级规划策略来解决，该策略由使用低级原语的高级元规划器组成；低级原语应该包括推握、扫射和其他不可抓握的动作，当简单的抓取和携带受到阻碍时，这些动作可以利用机制来操纵混乱的环境；环境状态及其物理属性的不确定性应该在元规划器和原始级别上考虑。更广泛的影响：虽然并非所有的推广目标都能在修订后的范围内完成，但杂乱的任务对美国约3500万（八分之一）的老龄化人口至关重要。此外，参与该项目的研究生将受益于与慕尼黑工业大学的持续合作，慕尼黑工业大学是机器人控制和个人机器人领域的世界领导者。TUM、CMU和西北大学有研究生交换的历史，并同意在该项目下接待交换学生。本科生将以REU学生或其他身份参与研究。最近在CMU和西北大学实验室工作的几名本科生继续攻读机器人博士学位，其中一些人获得了国家科学基金会的研究生奖学金。该项目的研究生将在即将到来的机器人革命展览期间参加科学与工业博物馆的实习。他们将与公众互动，并为展览的主舞台开发机器人操作演示。这些学生将为展览提供技术专业知识，同时从宝贵的推广经验中受益。其他计划的拓展活动包括实验室之旅和在当地高中的讲座。两位pi都是本科生研究项目的导师。作为这个项目的一部分，这些学生将有机会在最先进的操作硬件上工作。

The long-term goal of this project is to develop personal robots that share a workspace with humans. To achieve the goal of personal robots in homes, the robots must adapt to the humans' living space, not vice-versa. Unfortunately, most human living spaces appear cluttered and unstructured to a robot. Much of this "clutter" is in fact structure, but structure for humans, not robots. The preliminary work proposed in this revised project addresses preliminary work in robot manipulation in the presence of clutter and uncertainty. The demonstrator task is a canonical example of human-robot coexistence: sharing a refrigerator. The robot must be able to extract specified items from a refrigerator that may also be accessed and altered by humans. We will develop the beginnings of a solution based on the following principles: such manipulation tasks can be solved by a hierarchical two-level planning strategy, consisting of a high-level metaplanner making use of low-level primitives; the low-level primitives should include push-grasping, sweeping, and other nonprehensile actions that take advantage of mechanics to manipulate cluttered environments when simple grasp-and-carry is impeded; and uncertainty in the state of the environment and its physical properties should be accounted for at both the metaplanner and primitive levels.Broader Impacts: Although not all outreach goals can be completed within the revised scope, cluttered tasks are critically important for an aging population of about 35 million people (one in eight) in the United States. Furthermore, graduate students involved in this project will benefit from an ongoing collaboration with TU Munich, a world leader in robot control and personal robotics. TUM, CMU, and Northwestern have a history of graduate student exchange and have agreed to host exchange students under this project. Undergraduates will participate in the research as REU students or in other capacities. Several recent undergraduates working in the labs at CMU and Northwestern have gone on to PhD study in robotics, some with NSF graduate fellowships. Graduate students on this project will participate in internships at the Museum of Science and Industry during its upcoming Robot Revolution exhibit. They will interact with the public and help develop a robot manipulation demonstration for the exhibit main stage. These students will provide technical expertise to the exhibit while benefitting from a valuable outreach experience. Other planned outreach activities include lab tours and talks at local high schools. Both PIs serve as mentors in research programs for underrepresented undergraduate students. These students would have an opportunity to work on state-of-the-art manipulation hardware as part of this project.