NRI-Small: Spacial Primitives for Enabling Situated Human-Robot Interaction

为了实现自然和富有成效的人机交互（HRI），协作机器人必须理解和控制“邻近学”——空间的社会使用——以便以人类常用和理解的方式进行交流。这个项目的重点是回答以下问题：社会（语言和手势）、环境（大声噪音和低照明）和个人（听力和视觉障碍）因素如何影响人类和协作机器人之间的定位和交流，以及协作机器人应该如何调整其社会行为以最大限度地提高人类对其社会信号的感知？该项目将开发原则计算模型，用于识别和控制HRI中使用远程呈现和自主协作机器人的近距离协作机器人行为。该研究将为协同机器人技术建立一个HRI的基础组成部分，对社会辅助环境中的特殊需求用户（特别是老年人，无论是在当地还是在机构中）产生具体影响，其目标是减轻孤立和抑郁，并鼓励锻炼和社交。更广泛的影响：这项工作将为机器人的设计和控制提供信息，并为全球研究人员提供软件和公共HRI数据库。除了机器人之外，该项目还承诺为社会科学领域的长期研究提供信息、验证和扩展。该项目还包括一个强有力的公共和K-12外展组成部分，包括将正在制定的人类资源研究所主题编织成年度区域和国际外展活动。这些活动包括大型开放日和教育工作坊，互动演示和实践活动，突出计算系统中的人为因素，作为提高对stem相关活动兴趣的有效手段。

To enable natural and productive human-robot interaction (HRI), a co-robot must both understand and control "proxemics" -- the social use of space -- in order to communicate in ways commonly used and understood by humans. This project focuses on answering the question: How do social (speech and gesture), environmental (loud noises and low lighting), and personal (hearing and visual impairments) factors influence positioning and communication between humans and co-robots, and how should a co-robot adjust its social behaviors to maximize human perception of its social signals?The project will develop principled computational models for the recognition and control of proxemic co-robot behavior in HRI using both telepresence and autonomous co-robots. The research will establish a foundational component of HRI for co-robotics, with specific impact on special needs users in socially assistive contexts -- particularly the elderly, both aging in place and in institutions -- with the goal of mitigating isolation and depression, and encouraging exercise and socialization. Broader impacts: The work will inform robot design and control, and provide software and a corpus of public HRI data for use by researchers worldwide. Beyond robotics, the project promises to inform, validate, and extend longstanding research in the social sciences. This project also includes a strong public and K-12 outreach component consisting of weaving the HRI themes being developed into annual regional and international outreach events. The events feature large-scale open houses and educational workshops with interactive demonstrations and hands-on activities that highlight human factors in computational systems as an effective means of increasing interest in STEM-related activities.