MRI: Development of the Robotarium: A Shared, Remote Access, Multi-Robot Laboratory

在不久的将来，机器人辅助技术有可能在社会的几乎方方面面提高个人的生活质量。然而，为了实现这一未来，必须确保能够获得能够在机器人领域发现的仪器。在这方面，该项目开发了机器人馆，这是一个世界级的共享多机器人研究和教育设施，不同教育机构和年龄段的用户可以远程和本地访问。通过一个在线的、开放的公共界面，用户将能够安排和运行他们的实验，同时获得实验的流媒体视频以及通过实验产生的科学数据。预期的结果是一个首创的多机器人研究平台，可供研究人员、教育工作者和学生使用，而不会产生与建立和维护适当设备的研究设施相关的高昂成本。然而，更重要的是，预期结果超出了可及性。像机器人馆这样的研究工具有可能建立更强大的协作研究网络，从而使整体显著大于其各部分的总和。因此，最终结果有可能展示远程访问研究仪器可以如何在机器人以外的其他领域进行构建。机器人馆是一个开放的、远程访问的多机器人试验台，允许研究人员和教育工作者运行机器人实验，而不必招致与建立和维护实际研究设施相关的高昂成本。为了实现这一议程，该项目中的研究仪器努力沿着三个不同的方面进行，这三个方面将共同产生首个此类开放的远程访问多机器人研究设施。这三个维度是：(1)远程访问多机器人实验室，研究人员、教育工作者和学生可以在其中测试和运行他们自己的协调控制策略；(2)低成本、高性能的移动机器人，专门为支持远程访问多机器人研究而设计；以及(3)具有内置操作和网络安全原语的仪器开发，这一点至关重要，因为远程用户可以真正控制物理资产。机器人馆不仅将提供对多机器人设施的本地和远程访问，而且还将促进一些直接受益于机器人馆研究仪器的领域的研究，例如(I)群体机器人，(Ii)可视化和增强现实，(Iii)网络安全，(Iv)网络物理系统，以及(V)实时软件的正式模型检查。

In the near future, robot-assisted technologies have the potential to improve individuals' qualify of life in almost every aspect of society. However, in order to realize this future, access to instruments that enable discovery in the area of robotics must be ensured. In this regard, this project develops the Robotarium, a world-class, shared multi-robot research and education facility, remotely and locally accessible to users across different educational institutions and age groups. Through an online, open, public interface, users will be able to schedule and run their experiments, while being provided with both streaming video of the experiment as well as the scientific data produced through the experiment. The expected outcome is a first-of-its-kind multi-robot research platform that can be utilized by researchers, educators, and students, without incurring the prohibitive costs associated with setting up and maintaining a suitably-equipped research facility. Even more importantly, however, the expected outcome goes beyond access. A research instrument like the Robotarium has the potential to build stronger networks of collaborative research, thus making the whole significantly larger than the sum of its parts. As such, the end result has the potential to show how remote access research instruments can be structured in other areas beyond robotics.The Robotarium is an open, remote access multi-robot testbed that allows researchers and educators to run robotics experiments without having to incur the prohibitive costs associated with setting up and maintaining an actual research facility. In order to achieve this agenda, research instrumentation efforts in this project are pursued along three different dimensions that will come together to produce a first-of-its-kind open, remote access multi-robot research facility. These three dimensions are: (1) A remote access multi-robot laboratory where researchers, educators, and students can test and run their own coordinated control strategies; (2) Low-cost, high-performance mobile robots designed explicitly to support remote-access multi-robot research; and (3) Instrument development that has operational and cybersecurity primitives built-in, which is critical since remote users can literally take control of physical assets. The Robotarium will not only provide local and remote access to a multi-robotics facility, but it will also facilitate research in a number of areas that will directly benefit from the Robotarium research instrument, such as (i) swarm robotics, (ii) visualization and augmented reality, (iii) cybersecurity, (iv) cyber-physical systems, and (v) formal model-checking of real-time software.