Robotic Communications for 5G and Beyond: Challenges and Research Opportunities
Queen Mary University of London（伦敦玛丽女王大学）；Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；Louisiana State University（路易斯安那州立大学）；Memorial University（纪念大学）；Princeton University（普林斯顿大学）
Yuanwei Liu, Xiao Liu, Xinyu Gao, Xidong Mu, Xiangwei Zhou, Octavia A. Dobre, H. Vincent Poor
The ongoing surge in applications of robotics brings both opportunities and challenges for the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond (B5G) of communication networks. This article focuses on 5G/B5G-enabled terrestrial robotic communications with an emphasis on distinct characteristics of such communications. Firstly, signal and spatial modeling for robotic communications are presented. To elaborate further, both the benefits and challenges derived from robots' mobility are discussed. As a further advance, a novel simultaneous localization and radio mapping (SLARM) framework is proposed for integrating localization and communications into robotic networks. Furthermore, dynamic trajectory design and resource allocation for both indoor and outdoor robots are provided to verify the performance of robotic communications in the context of typical robotic application scenarios.
Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；PerceptIn（普思英察）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）
Robotic computing has reached a tipping point, with a myriad of robots (e.g., drones, self-driving cars, logistic robots) being widely applied in diverse scenarios. The continuous proliferation of robotics, however, critically depends on efficient computing substrates, driven by real-time requirements, robotic size-weight-and-power constraints, cybersecurity considerations, and dynamically changing scenarios. Within all platforms, FPGA is able to deliver both software and hardware solutions with low power, high performance, reconfigurability, reliability, and adaptivity characteristics, servin…
University of Bristol（布里斯托大学）；Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托机器人实验室）；Avian Technologies Ltd（Avian Technologies有限公司）
The success of the human-robot co-worker team in a flexible manufacturing environment where robots learn from demonstration heavily relies on the correct and safe operation of the robot. How this can be achieved is a challenge that requires addressing both technical as well as human-centric research questions. In this paper we discuss the state of the art in safety assurance, existing as well as emerging standards in this area, and the need for new approaches to safety assurance in the context of learning machines. We then focus on robotic learning from demonstration, the challenges these tech…
Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence（海军人工智能应用研究中心）；Naval Research Laboratory（海军研究实验室）
Robotic hardware designs are becoming more complex as the variety and number of on-board sensors increase and as greater computational power is provided in ever-smaller packages on-board robots. These advances in hardware, however, do not automatically translate into better software for controlling complex robots. Evolutionary techniques hold the potential to solve many difficult problems in robotics which defy simple conventional approaches, but present many challenges as well. Numerous disciplines including artificial life, cognitive science and neural networks, rule-based systems, behavior-…
University of Augsburg（奥格斯堡大学）；XITASO GmbH（XITASO有限公司）
This paper introduces two case studies combining the field of industrial robotics with Mixed Reality (MR). The goal of those case studies is to get a better understanding of how MR can be useful and what are the limitations. The first case study describes an approach to visualize the digital twin of a robot arm. The second case study aims at facilitating the commissioning of industrial robots. Furthermore, this paper reports the experiences gained by implementing those two scenarios and discusses the limitations.
When Robotics Meets Wireless Communications: An Introductory Tutorial
College of Computing, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University（穆罕默德六世理工大学计算机学院）；Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克技术大学）；International University of Rabat（拉巴特国际大学）；School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds（利兹大学电子与电气工程学院）
Digital Twin technology is being envisioned to be an integral part of the industrial evolution in modern generation. With the rapid advancement in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology and increasing trend of automation, integration between the virtual and the physical world is now realizable to produce practical digital twins. However, the existing definitions of digital twin is incomplete and sometimes ambiguous. Herein, we conduct historical review and analyze the modern generic view of digital twin to create its new extended definition. We also review and discuss the existing work in dig…
Robotics for poultry farming: challenges and opportunities
Ataturk University, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine（阿塔图尔克大学兽医学院）；School of Engineering and Materials Science, Queen Mary University of London（伦敦大学玛丽皇后学院工程与材料科学学院）
Heriot-Watt University（赫瑞瓦特大学）；CWI（荷兰数学与计算机科学中心）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）；The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）
A global trend in increasing wind turbine size and distances from shore is emerging within the rapidly growing offshore wind farm market. In the UK, the offshore wind sector produced its highest amount of electricity in the UK in 2019, a 19.6% increase on the year before. Currently, the UK is set to increase production further, targeting a 74.7% increase of installed turbine capacity as reflected in recent Crown Estate leasing rounds. With such tremendous growth, the sector is now looking to Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI) in order to tackle lifecycle service barriers as to support …
Safety-aware Goal-oriented Semantic Sensing, Communication, and Control for Robotics
Department of Engineering, King’s College London（工程系，伦敦国王学院）；Department of Intelligent Systems, KTH Royal Institute of Technology（智能系统系，皇家理工学院）；Department of Automation Technology, ABB Corporate Research Sweden（自动化技术系，ABB瑞典公司）；Institute for Digital Communications, FriedrichAlexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg（数字通信研究所，埃尔兰根-纽伦堡弗里德里希-亚历山大大学）
Large Language Models for Robotics: Opportunities, Challenges, and Perspectives
Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学）；The University of Georgia（佐治亚大学）；Shaanxi Normal University（陕西师范大学）；Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School（麻省总医院和哈佛医学院）
ENSTA Paris（巴黎高等先进技术学院）；Institut Polytechnique de Paris（巴黎理工学院）；INRIA（法国国家信息与自动化研究所）；Thales（泰雷兹集团）；University of Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）
Continual learning (CL) is a particular machine learning paradigm where the data distribution and learning objective changes through time, or where all the training data and objective criteria are never available at once. The evolution of the learning process is modeled by a sequence of learning experiences where the goal is to be able to learn new skills all along the sequence without forgetting what has been previously learned. Continual learning also aims at the same time at optimizing the memory, the computation power and the speed during the learning process. An important challenge for ma…
In this work we present an experimental setup to show the suitability of ROS 2.0 for real-time robotic applications. We disclose an evaluation of ROS 2.0 communications in a robotic inter-component (hardware) communication case on top of Linux. We benchmark and study the worst case latencies and missed deadlines to characterize ROS 2.0 communications for real-time applications. We demonstrate experimentally how computation and network congestion impacts the communication latencies and ultimately, propose a setup that, under certain conditions, mitigates these delays and obtains bounded traffic…
Localized communication in swarms has been shown to increase swarm effectiveness in some situations by allowing for additional opportunities for cooperation. However, communication and utilization of potentially outdated information is also a concern. We present an explicit non-directional goal-based communication model and message accept/reject scheme, and test our model in a set of object gathering experiments with a swarm of robots. The results of the experiments indicate that even low levels of communication regarding the swarm's goal outperform high levels of random information communicat…
Learning to Optimize Edge Robotics: A Fast Integrated Perception-Motion-Communication Approach
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；South China University of Technology（华南理工大学）；Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（深圳先进技术研究院，中国科学院）；University of Macau（澳门大学）
University of Denver（丹佛大学）；Purdue University（普渡大学）；Boulder Language Technologies（博尔德语言技术公司）
This article proposes an emotive lifelike robotic face, called ExpressionBot, that is designed to support verbal and non-verbal communication between the robot and humans, with the goal of closely modeling the dynamics of natural face-to-face communication. The proposed robotic head consists of two major components: 1) a hardware component that contains a small projector, a fish-eye lens, a custom-designed mask and a neck system with 3 degrees of freedom; 2) a facial animation system, projected onto the robotic mask, that is capable of presenting facial expressions, realistic eye movement, and…
Toward Generalist Neural Motion Planners for Robotic Manipulators: Challenges and Opportunities
J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University（J. Mike Walker ’66 机械工程系，德克萨斯A&M大学）；Lab of Biomechatronics and Intelligent Robotics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University（生物机械与智能机器人实验室，生物医学工程系，Tandon工程学院，纽约大学）；Department of Computer Science, Columbia University（计算机科学系，哥伦比亚大学）；Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University（土木与环境工程系，德克萨斯A&M大学）
Northeastern University（东北大学）；University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources（马萨诸塞州能源资源部）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)（麻省理工学院）；MIT-WHOI Joint Program（麻省理工学院-伍兹霍尔海洋研究所联合项目）；Tufts University（塔夫茨大学）；University of California Davis（加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）；Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution（伍兹霍尔海洋研究所）；University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）
Although fiducial markers give an accurate pose estimation in laboratory conditions, where the noisy factors are controlled, using them in field robotic applications remains a challenge. This is constrained to the fiducial maker systems, since they only work within the RGB image space. As a result, noises in the image produce large pose estimation errors. In robotic applications, fiducial markers have been mainly used in its original and simple form, as a plane in a printed paper sheet. This setup is sufficient for basic visual servoing and augmented reality applications, but not for complex s…
This position paper argues on the utility of rebellion and disobedience (RaD) in human-robot interaction (HRI). In general, we see two main opportunities in the use of controlled and well designed rebellion and disobedience: i) illuminate insight into the effectiveness of the collaboration (or lack of) and ii) prevent mistakes and correct user actions when in the user's own interest. Through the use of a close interaction modality, that of handheld robots, we discuss use cases for utility of rebellion and disobedience that can be applicable to other instances of HRI.
We introduce AIR4Children, Artificial Intelligence for Children, as a way to (a) tackle aspects for inclusion, accessibility, transparency, equity, fairness and participation and (b) to create affordable child-centred materials in AI and Robotics (AIR). We present current challenges and opportunities for a child-centred approaches for AIR. Similarly, we touch on open-sourced software and hardware technologies to make a more inclusive, affordable and fair participation of children in areas of AIR. Then, we describe the avenues that AIR4Children can take with the development of open-sourced soft…
State Key Laboratory of High Performance Computing (HPCL)（高性能计算国家重点实验室）；School of Computer, National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学计算机学院）
Recent years have witnessed the prosperity of robots and in order to support consensus and cooperation for multi-robot system, wireless communications and networking among robots and the infrastructure have become indispensable. In this technical note, we first provide an overview of the research contributions on communication-aware motion planning (CAMP) in designing wireless-connected robotic networks (WCRNs), where the degree-of-freedom (DoF) provided by motion and communication capabilities embraced by the robots have not been fully exploited. Therefore, we propose the framework of joint c…
This paper presents a communication framework built to simplify the construction of robotic ecologies, i.e., networks of heterogeneous computational nodes interfaced with sensors, actuators, and mobile robots. Building integrated ambient intelligence (AmI) solutions out of such a wide range of heterogeneous devices is a key requirement for a range of application domains, such as home automation, logistic, security and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). This goal is challenging since these ecologies need to adapt to changing environments and especially when they include tiny embedded devices with l…
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Waverly；Mila；University of Montreal（蒙特利尔大学）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；Technische Universität Berlin（柏林工业大学）；Element AI – A ServiceNow Company（Element AI – ServiceNow旗下公司）；University of Washington（华盛顿大学）；University of Pennsylvania（宾夕法尼亚大学）；McGill University（麦吉尔大学）；[Google] X
Machine learning has long since become a keystone technology, accelerating science and applications in a broad range of domains. Consequently, the notion of applying learning methods to a particular problem set has become an established and valuable modus operandi to advance a particular field. In this article we argue that such an approach does not straightforwardly extended to robotics -- or to embodied intelligence more generally: systems which engage in a purposeful exchange of energy and information with a physical environment. In particular, the purview of embodied intelligent agents ext…
Robotic Sensor Network: Achieving Mutual Communication Control Assistance With Fast Cross-Layer Optimization
Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院深圳先进技术研究院）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；University of Macau（澳门大学）；University of New South Wales（新南威尔士大学）
We are given an equal number of mobile robotic agents, and distinct target locations. Each agent has simple integrator dynamics, a limited communication range, and knowledge of the position of every target. We address the problem of designing a distributed algorithm that allows the group of agents to divide the targets among themselves and, simultaneously, leads each agent to reach its unique target. We do not require connectivity of the communication graph at any time. We introduce a novel assignment-based algorithm with the following features: initial assignments and robot motions follow a g…
We argue that Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) will become the de facto standard for real-time communications in robotics. We present a review and classification of the different communication standards which are relevant for the field and introduce the typical problems with traditional switched Ethernet networks. We discuss some of the TSN features relevant for deterministic communications and evaluate experimentally one of the shaping mechanisms in an exemplary robotic scenario. In particular, and based on our results, we claim that many of the existing real-time industrial solutions will slo…
Texas A&M University（德州农工大学）；Texas A&M University at Qatar（德州农工大学卡塔尔分校）
Robotic systems are increasingly used in rehabilitation to provide high intensity training for patients with motor impairment. The results of controlled trials involving human subjects confirm the effectiveness of robot-enhanced methods and prove them to be marginally superior over standard manual therapy in some cases. Although very promising, this line of research is still in its infancy and further studies are required to fully understand the potential benefits of using robotic devices such as exoskeletons. Exoskeletons have been widely studied due to their capability in providing more cont…
University of Lincoln（林肯大学）；Guangzhou University（广州大学）
In the last few decades we have witnessed how the pheromone of social insect has become a rich inspiration source of swarm robotics. By utilising the virtual pheromone in physical swarm robot system to coordinate individuals and realise direct/indirect inter-robot communications like the social insect, stigmergic behaviour has emerged. However, many studies only take one single pheromone into account in solving swarm problems, which is not the case in real insects. In the real social insect world, diverse behaviours, complex collective performances and flexible transition from one state to ano…
Robots have the potential to be a game changer in healthcare: improving health and well-being, filling care gaps, supporting care givers, and aiding health care workers. However, before robots are able to be widely deployed, it is crucial that both the research and industrial communities work together to establish a strong evidence-base for healthcare robotics, and surmount likely adoption barriers. This article presents a broad contextualization of robots in healthcare by identifying key stakeholders, care settings, and tasks; reviewing recent advances in healthcare robotics; and outlining ma…
The University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克理工大学）；Durham University（杜伦大学）
The recent advancement of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) contributed to robotics by allowing automatic controller design. The automatic controller design is a crucial approach for designing swarm robotic systems, which require more complex controllers than a single robot system to lead a desired collective behaviour. Although the DRL-based controller design method showed its effectiveness, the reliance on the central training server is a critical problem in real-world environments where robot-server communication is unstable or limited. We propose a novel Federated Learning (FL) based DRL t…
Modern computing platforms for robotics applications comprise a set of heterogeneous elements, e.g., multi-core CPUs, embedded GPUs, and FPGAs. FPGAs are reprogrammable hardware devices that allow for fast and energy-efficient computation of many relevant tasks in robotics. ROS is the de-facto programming standard for robotics and decomposes an application into a set of communicating nodes. ReconROS is a previous approach that can map complete ROS nodes into hardware for acceleration. Since ReconROS relies on standard ROS communication layers, exchanging data between hardware-mapped nodes can …
University of Surrey（萨里大学）；Royal Holloway, University of London（伦敦大学皇家霍洛威学院）
Swarm robotics is the study of how a large number of relatively simple robots can be designed so that a desired collective behaviour emerges from the local interactions among robots and between the robots and their environment. While many aspects of a swarm may be modelled as various types of ad hoc networks, and accordingly many aspects of security of the swarm may be achieved by conventional means, here we will focus on swarm emergent behaviour as something that most distinguishes swarm robotics from ad hoc networks. We discuss the challenges emergent behaviour poses on communications securi…
This paper introduces REMS, a robotics middleware and control framework that is designed to introduce the Zen of Python to robotics and to improve robotics education and development flow. Although existing middleware can serve hardware abstraction and modularity, setting up environments and learning middleware-specific syntax and procedures are less viable in education. They can curb opportunities to understand robotics concepts, theories, and algorithms. Robotics is a field of integration; students and developers from various backgrounds will be involved in programming. Establishing Pythonic …
In this work, we analyze \textit{stochastic coverage schemes} (SCS) for robotic swarms in which the robots randomly attach to a one-dimensional boundary of interest using local communication and sensing, without relying on global position information or a map of the environment. Robotic swarms may be required to perform boundary coverage in a variety of applications, including environmental monitoring, collective transport, disaster response, and nanomedicine. We present a novel analytical approach to computing and designing the statistical properties of the communication and sensing networks …
Advantages of Multimodal versus Verbal-Only Robot-to-Human Communication with an Anthropomorphic Robotic Mock Driver
Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS)（应用自主传感器系统中心（AASS））；Örebro University（厄勒布鲁大学）；Robert Bosch GmbH（罗伯特·博世有限公司）；University of Skövde（舍夫德大学）；TU Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）
