Show Me What You Can Do: Capability Calibration on Reachable Workspace for Human-Robot Collaboration
UCLA Center for Vision, Cognition, Learning, and Autonomy (VCLA)（加州大学洛杉矶分校视觉、认知、学习与自主中心（VCLA））；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；UCLA Department of Psychology（加州大学洛杉矶分校心理学系）；Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI)（北京通用人工智能研究院（BIGAI））；Peking University（北京大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
X. Gao, L. Yuan, T. Shu, H. Lu and S. -C. Zhu, "Show Me What You Can Do: Capability Calibration on Reachable Workspace for Human-Robot Collaboration," in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, doi: 10.1109/LRA.2022.3144779
Aligning humans' assessment of what a robot can do with its true capability is crucial for establishing a common ground between human and robot partners when they collaborate on a joint task. In this work, we propose an approach to calibrate humans' estimate of a robot's reachable workspace through a small number of demonstrations before collaboration. We develop a novel motion planning method, REMP, which jointly optimizes the physical cost and the expressiveness of robot motion to reveal the robot's reachability to a human observer. Our experiments with human participants demonstrate that a short calibration using REMP can effectively bridge the gap between what a non-expert user thinks a robot can reach and the ground truth. We show that this calibration procedure not only results in better user perception, but also promotes more efficient human-robot collaborations in a subsequent joint task.
Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克技术大学）；Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague（布拉格捷克技术大学电气工程学院）
The need to guarantee safety of collaborative robots limits their performance, in particular, their speed and hence cycle time. The standard ISO/TS 15066 defines the Power and Force Limiting operation mode and prescribes force thresholds that a moving robot is allowed to exert on human body parts during impact, along with a simple formula to obtain maximum allowed speed of the robot in the whole workspace. In this work, we measure the forces exerted by two collaborative manipulators (UR10e and KUKA LBR iiwa) moving downward against an impact measuring device. First, we empirically show that th…
Investigating the Effect of LED Signals and Emotional Displays in Human-Robot Shared Workspaces
German International University（德国国际大学）；Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab（智能自主系统实验室）；Department of Computer Science, TU Darmstadt（计算机科学系，图恩-达姆施塔特技术大学）；German Research Center for AI (DFKI)（德国人工智能研究中心）；Centre for Cognitive Science, TU Darmstadt（认知科学中心，图恩-达姆施塔特技术大学）；Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence (Hessian.AI)（黑森人工智能中心）
Industrial standards define safety requirements for Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) in industrial manufacturing. The standards particularly require real-time monitoring and securing of the minimum protective distance between a robot and an operator. In this work, we propose a depth-sensor based model for workspace monitoring and an interactive Augmented Reality (AR) User Interface (UI) for safe HRC. The AR UI is implemented on two different hardware: a projector-mirror setup anda wearable AR gear (HoloLens). We experiment the workspace model and UIs for a realistic diesel motor assembly task. …
Monash University（莫纳什大学）；University of British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚大学）
We provide an experimental evaluation of a wearable augmented reality (AR) system we have developed for human-robot teams working on tasks requiring collaboration in shared physical workspace. Recent advances in AR technology have facilitated the development of more intuitive user interfaces for many human-robot interaction applications. While it has been anticipated that AR can provided a more intuitive interface to robot assistants helping human workers in various manufacturing scenarios, existing studies in robotics have been largely limited to teleoperation and programming. Industry 5.0 en…
It is well-known that a deep understanding of co-workers' behavior and preference is important for collaboration effectiveness. In this work, we present a method to accomplish smooth human-robot collaboration in close proximity by taking into account the human's behavior while planning the robot's trajectory. In particular, we first use an occupancy map to summarize human's movement preference over time, and such prior information is then considered in an optimization-based motion planner via two cost items as introduced in [1]: 1) avoidance of the workspace previously occupied by human, to el…
Dynamic Risk Assessment for Human-Robot Collaboration Using a Heuristics-based Approach
University of Stuttgart（斯图加特大学）；Proximity Robotics & Automation GmbH（普罗克西姆机器人与自动化有限公司）；Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, BAuA)（联邦职业安全与健康研究所）
Roma Tre University（罗马第三大学）；University of Cassino and Southern Lazio（卡西诺和南拉齐奥大学）
This paper considers a scenario where a robot and a human operator share the same workspace, and the robot is able to both carry out autonomous tasks and physically interact with the human in order to achieve common goals. In this context, both intentional and accidental contacts between human and robot might occur due to the complexity of tasks and environment, to the uncertainty of human behavior, and to the typical lack of awareness of each other actions. Here, a two stage strategy based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) is designed to detect intentional and accidental contacts: the occur…
Queen’s University Belfast（贝尔法斯特女王大学）；University of Warwick（华威大学）
Physical human-robot collaboration requires strict safety guarantees since robots and humans work in a shared workspace. This letter presents a novel control framework to handle safety-critical position-based constraints for human-robot physical interaction. The proposed methodology is based on admittance control, exponential control barrier functions (ECBFs) and quadratic program (QP) to achieve compliance during the force interaction between human and robot, while simultaneously guaranteeing safety constraints. In particular, the formulation of admittance control is rewritten as a second-ord…
In this paper, we present a cyber-physical testbed created to enable a human-robot team to perform a shared task in a shared workspace. The testbed is suitable for the implementation of a tabletop manipulation task, a common human-robot collaboration scenario. The testbed integrates elements that exist in the physical and virtual world. In this work, we report the insights we gathered throughout our exploration in understanding and implementing task planning and execution for human-robot team.
A basic task in the design of a robotic production cell is the relative placement of robot and workpiece. The fundamental requirement is that the robot can reach all process positions; only then one can think of further optimization. Therefore an algorithm that automatically places an object into the workspace is very desirable. However many iterative optimzation algorithms cannot guarantee that all intermediate steps are reachable, resulting in complicated procedures. We present a novel approach which extends a robot by a virtual prismatic joint - which measures the distance to the workspace …
Human-Robot collaboration in surgery: Advances and challenges towards autonomous surgical assistants
Department of Micro-Nano Mechanical Science and Engineering, Nagoya University（名古屋大学微纳米机械科学与工程系）；Institutes of Innovation for Future Society, Nagoya University（面向未来社会的创新研究所）
Human-robot collaboration (HRC) is an emerging trend of robotics that promotes the co-presence and cooperation of humans and robots in common workspaces. Physical vicinity and interaction between humans and robots, combined with the uncertainty of human behaviour, could lead to undesired situations where humans are injured. Thus, safety is a priority for HRC applications. Safety analysis via formal modelling and verification techniques could considerably avoid dangerous consequences, but only if the models of HRC systems are comprehensive and realistic, which requires reasonably realistic mode…
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia（摩德纳-雷焦艾米利亚大学）
In collaborative robotic cells, a human operator and a robot share the workspace in order to execute a common job, consisting of a set of tasks. A proper allocation and scheduling of the tasks for the human and for the robot is crucial for achieving an efficient human-robot collaboration. In order to deal with the dynamic and unpredictable behavior of the human and for allowing the human and the robot to negotiate about the tasks to be executed, a two layers architecture for solving the task allocation and scheduling problem is proposed. The first layer optimally solves the task allocation pro…
Motion Priority Optimization Framework towards Automated and Teleoperated Robot Cooperation in Industrial Recovery Scenarios
Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center at National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)（日本国家先进工业科学技术研究院工业闭环系统研究中心）
Flexible-joint manipulators are frequently used for increased safety during human-robot collaboration and shared workspace tasks. However, joint flexibility significantly reduces the accuracy of motion, especially at high velocities and with inexpensive actuators. In this paper, we present a learning-based approach to identify the unknown dynamics of a flexible-joint manipulator and improve the trajectory tracking at high velocities. We propose a two-stage model which is composed of a one-step forward dynamics future predictor and an inverse dynamics estimator. The second part is based on line…
RM4D: A Combined Reachability and Inverse Reachability Map for Common 6-/7-axis Robot Arms by Dimensionality Reduction to 4D
Aston University（阿斯顿大学）；Aston Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Application (ACAIRA)（阿斯顿人工智能研究与应用中心）；Department of Applied AI & Robotics（应用人工智能与机器人学系）
Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines（机器人与智能机器研究所）；College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院计算学院）
We present GTGraffiti, a graffiti painting system from Georgia Tech that tackles challenges in art, hardware, and human-robot collaboration. The problem of painting graffiti in a human style is particularly challenging and requires a system-level approach because the robotics and art must be designed around each other. The robot must be highly dynamic over a large workspace while the artist must work within the robot's limitations. Our approach consists of three stages: artwork capture, robot hardware, and planning & control. We use motion capture to capture collaborator painting motions which…
Queen’s University of Belfast（贝尔法斯特女王大学）；University of Warwick（华威大学）
This paper proposes a novel fixed-time integral sliding mode controller for admittance control to enhance physical human-robot collaboration. The proposed method combines the benefits of compliance to external forces of admittance control and high robustness to uncertainties of integral sliding mode control (ISMC), such that the system can collaborate with a human partner in an uncertain environment effectively. Firstly, a fixed-time sliding surface is applied in the ISMC to make the tracking error of the system converge within a fixed-time regardless of the initial condition. Then, a fixed-ti…
Osaka University（大阪大学）；National Inst. of AIST（国立先进工业科学技术研究所）
In this paper, we present a planner for a master dual-arm robot to manipulate tethered tools with an assistant dual-arm robot's help. The assistant robot provides assistance to the master robot by manipulating the tool cable and avoiding collisions. The provided assistance allows the master robot to perform tool placements on the robot workspace table to regrasp the tool, which would typically fail since the tool cable tension may change the tool positions. It also allows the master robot to perform tool handovers, which would normally cause entanglements or collisions with the cable and the e…
Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems（马克斯·普朗克智能系统研究所）；Worcester Polytechnic Institute（伍斯特理工学院）
To enable safe and efficient human-robot collaboration in shared workspaces it is important for the robot to predict how a human will move when performing a task. While predicting human motion for tasks not known a priori is very challenging, we argue that single-arm reaching motions for known tasks in collaborative settings (which are especially relevant for manufacturing) are indeed predictable. Two hypotheses underlie our approach for predicting such motions: First, that the trajectory the human performs is optimal with respect to an unknown cost function, and second, that human adaptation …
LiHRA: A LiDAR-Based HRI Dataset for Automated Risk Monitoring Methods
Proximity Robotics & Automation GmbH（近距机器人与自动化有限公司）；Institute of Industrial Automation and Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart（工业自动化与软件工程学院，斯图加特大学）
CoEnv: Driving Embodied Multi-Agent Collaboration via Compositional Environment
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Shanghai AI Laboratory（上海人工智能实验室）；Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；CUHK-Shenzhen（香港中文大学（深圳））；Fudan University（复旦大学）；Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学）；Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
Motion planning for a multi-limbed climbing robot must consider the robot's posture, joint torques, and how it uses contact forces to interact with its environment. This paper focuses on motion planning for a robot that uses nontraditional locomotion to explore unpredictable environments such as martian caves. Our robotic concept, ReachBot, uses extendable and retractable booms as limbs to achieve a large reachable workspace while climbing. Each extendable boom is capped by a microspine gripper designed for grasping rocky surfaces. ReachBot leverages its large workspace to navigate around obst…
An unsolved challenge in cooking automation is designing for shared kitchen workspaces. In particular, robots struggle with dexterity in the unstructured and dynamic kitchen environment. We propose that human-machine collaboration can be achieved without robotic manipulation. We describe a novel system design using computer vision to inform intelligent cooking interventions. This human-centered approach does not require actuators and promotes dynamic, natural collaboration. We show that automation that assists user-led actions can offer meaningful cooking assistance and can generate the image …
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利理工学院）；Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition（佛罗里达人机认知研究所）
Performing large step-ups is a challenging task for a humanoid robot. It requires the robot to perform motions at the limit of its reachable workspace while straining to move its body upon the obstacle. This paper presents a non-linear trajectory optimization method for generating step-up motions. We adopt a simplified model of the centroidal dynamics to generate feasible Center of Mass trajectories aimed at reducing the torques required for the step-up motion. The activation and deactivation of contacts at both feet are considered explicitly. The output of the planner is a Center of Mass traj…
