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

机器人界在抓取和操纵方面有着丰富的研究和开发历史。然而，事实证明，在现实世界(如家庭和小规模工业)中进行抓取工作是非常困难的。部分问题是可以在实验室进行的测试数量有限。测试需要专门的硬件和非常大量的试验，这对单个研究人员来说很难单独完成。这个项目的目标是建立专门的抓取和操纵测试中心，任何有互联网连接的人都可以使用。考试中心将提供标准化的基准、软件和教程，教人们掌握的基础知识，以及执行实际测试的硬件。这一基础设施将使人们更容易共享和比较结果，并使人们更容易做出贡献，而不需要购买(和维护)大量专门的硬件。这项提议包括四个部分：1)开发专门的硬件，用于在两个设施(一个在俄勒冈州立大学，一个在马萨诸塞大学洛厄尔)进行测试和部署，这两个设施都有专用的机械臂和机械手；2)软件基础设施，使远程访问能够指定任务，运行那些任务，然后可视化结果；3)实现新的和现有的基准协议(如在国家标准与技术研究所(NIST)开发的)；以及4)发展包括学术、工业和政府机构在内的用户社区。试验台方法应该允许新的和现有的研究人员以一种低成本的方法参与掌握和操纵科学社区，并提供该领域可以发展的标准。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.