NRI: Human Cognition Assisted Control of Industrial Robots for Manufacturing

以工业机器人为动力的先进制造业在美国经济中发挥着越来越大的作用。机器人被用来进行组装、焊接、材料搬运和制造。尽管这种互动在制造的每个阶段都变得越来越常见，但机器和人类之间的完美共生关系仍然非常遥远。正因为如此，大多数机器人在制造业中的应用目前仅限于需要相对较低技能水平的领域。这限制了机器人技术在增加人类操作员和提高生产率和生活质量方面的全部潜力。随着认知神经科学和脑接口技术的最新进展，将人类的认知思维过程直接连接到机器人和机器上成为可能，从而直接控制现实世界的应用程序。通过使用传感器收集大脑信号并分析思维过程，当人类采取特定行动或想到行动时，大脑中发生的许多活动可以通过快速计算来识别并与已知信号相匹配。这一新的人-机器人交流模式将通过开发三个制造场景进行演示。该项目还将在制造业以外的领域的机器人系统设计中具有广泛的适用性，包括远程外科手术、康复和空间探索。这项结合了制造业、计算机科学和机器人学的多学科研究成果，有可能提高未来制造工厂的生产率，并可能带来新的商业冒险，这将有助于美国保持机器人和制造业的全球领导地位，扩大未被充分代表的群体参与研究，并对工程教育产生积极影响。未来将解决开发新的人-机器人通信系统的重大挑战，该系统允许操作员执行复杂的高技能任务。将通过应对以下智力挑战来探索假设的范式：(I)研究一种新的方法，通过使用称为“actemes”的语法想象简单的动作来向机器人传达运动命令，(Ii)新的脑机模式和算法来对这些actemes进行分类，以及(Iii)基于意图的系统，该系统根据人类操作员计划完成的最可能的事件序列自动完成机器人动作。将探索三个机器人制造场景，以展示制造环境中基于人类认知的交互：装配、直接控制和通过物体识别进行质量控制。最后，通过使用非侵入性脑-计算机接口，将展示机器人技术的广泛日常应用。

Advanced manufacturing, driven by industrial robots, is playing an increasing role in US economy. Robots are being used to carry out assembly, welding, material handling and fabrication. Even as such interactions are becoming more common in every phase of manufacturing, a perfect symbiotic relationship between machines and human beings is still very far away. Because of this, a majority of the robotic applications in manufacturing are currently limited to areas where a relatively low level of skill is required. This has restricted the full potential of robotics to augment human operators and improve productivity and quality of life. With recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain interface technologies, connecting the human cognitive thought process directly to robots and machines is possible, resulting in direct control of real world applications. By collecting the brain signals using sensors and analyzing the thought processes, many activities that take place inside the brain when humans take specific actions or think of actions can be identified and matched to known signals using fast computation. This new human-robot communication paradigm will be demonstrated by developing three manufacturing scenarios. The project will also have broad applicability in the design of robotic systems in fields outside manufacturing, including telesurgery, rehabilitation and space exploration. Results from this multidisciplinary research, which combines manufacturing, computer science and robotics, have the potential to improve the productivity of future manufacturing plants and can lead to new commercial ventures, which will help the US maintain global leadership in robotics and manufacturing, broaden participation of underrepresented groups in research, and positively impact engineering education.Significant future challenges in the development of a new human-robot communication system, which allows operators to perform complex high skilled tasks, will be addressed. The postulated paradigm will be explored by meeting the following intellectual challenges: (i) researching a novel methodology for communicating motion commands to a robot by imagining simple actions using a grammar called "actemes," (ii) new brain-computer mode and algorithms to classify these actemes and, (iii) an intent-based system that auto-completes robotic actions based on most likely sequence of events that human operators are planning to complete. Three robotic manufacturing scenarios will be explored to demonstrate the human cognition based interactions in manufacturing environment: assembly, direct control, and quality control through object recognition. Finally, by using a non-invasive brain-computer interface a wide range of day-to-day applications of robotics will be demonstrated.