CCRI: Medium: Collaborative Research: Physical Robotic Manipulation Test Facility

机器人社区在抓取和操纵方面有着丰富的研究和开发历史。然而，已经证明在真实的世界中使抓取工作是非常困难的（例如，家庭和小型工业）。部分问题在于实验室可以进行的测试数量有限。测试需要专门的硬件和大量的试验，这对于一个研究人员来说是很难做到的。该项目的目标是建立专门的抓握和操纵测试中心，任何人都可以通过互联网连接使用。测试中心将提供标准化的基准，软件和教程来教人们掌握基本知识，以及执行实际测试的硬件。这种基础设施将使人们更容易分享和比较结果，并使人们更容易贡献而不需要购买（和维护）大量的专业硬件。本建议有四个部分; 1）开发专用硬件，用于在两个设施中进行测试和部署（一个在俄勒冈州州立大学，一个在马萨诸塞州洛厄尔大学）; 2）软件基础设施，使远程访问指定任务，运行这些任务，然后可视化结果; 3）实施新的和现有的基准协议（如在美国国家标准与技术研究所（NIST）开发的）;和4）开发一个用户社区，包括学术，工业和政府机构。该试验台的方法应允许新的和现有的研究人员参与抓和操纵科学界的低成本方法，并提供该领域可以成长的标准。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The robotics community has a rich history of research and development in grasping and manipulation. However, it has proven to be very difficult to make grasping work in the real world (e.g., homes and small-scale industry). Part of the problem is the limited amount of testing that can be done in a lab. Testing requires specialized hardware and a very large number of trials, which is difficult for a single researcher to do on their own. The goal of this project is to set up dedicated test centers for grasping and manipulation that can be used by anyone with an internet connection. The test centers will provide standardized benchmarks, software and tutorials to teach people the basics of grasping, and hardware to perform the actual testing. This infrastructure will make it easier for people to share and compare results, and make it easier for people to contribute without needing to buy (and maintain) a large amount of specialized hardware.There are four parts to this proposal; 1) Developing specialized hardware for testing and deploying in two facilities (one at Oregon State University, one at the University of Massachusetts Lowell) that have dedicated robotic arms and manipulators; 2) Software infrastructure to enable remote access for specifying tasks, running those tasks, then visualizing the results; 3) Implementing new and existing benchmark protocols (such as the ones developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)); and 4) Developing a community of users, including academic, industrial, and governmental institutions. The testbed approach should allow new and existing researchers a low cost method to participating in the grasping and manipulation scientific community and to provide standards from which the field can grow.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.