| NSF Org: |
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 17, 2018 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 23, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 1830242 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Juan Wachs
IIS Division of Information & Intelligent Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2018 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $749,986.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $797,986.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2020 = $16,000.00 FY 2021 = $16,000.00 FY 2022 = $16,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
21 N PARK ST STE 6301 MADISON WI US 53715-1218 (608)262-3822 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1210 West Dayton St Madison WI US 53706-1613 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
IIS Special Projects, NRI-National Robotics Initiati |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002021DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
For robots to become ubiquitous collaborators, they must interact physically with objects in unstructured human environments. Robots must adeptly grasp, push, squeeze, snap, balance, stabilize and hand-off objects, and must effectively communicate about these actions with their human collaborators. People must not only be able to specify to a robot what to do and how to do it, they must also be able to interpret what a robot intends to do (and how). Effective communication about physical interactions will be essential if robots are going to perform such tasks as delivering care to older adults, responsively helping technicians in performing repairs, or being trained by non-experts to perform repetitive assembly tasks. This project will enable a new generation of robot applications, and advance the vision of ubiquitous, collaborative robots by developing better methods for robots to more effectively communicate with people.
The project will address key challenges in communication about physical interactions: conveying invisible and unfamiliar quantities (e.g., forces and compliances), communicating plans and contingencies, and communicating about what did not (or should not) happen. The project will involve three key challenges: specification, interpretation, and monitoring. To address these challenges, the project will 1) perform formative studies to gain insight into how people communicate about physical interactions and interpret displays; 2) develop methods for specifying physical actions based on the idea of augmented demonstrations, methods for interpreting physical actions based on the idea of interpretable representations, and methods for monitoring physical actions based on multimodal communication; and 3) deploy these ideas in prototype systems for contextualized scenarios for evaluation.
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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project has developed a better understanding of and methods for communicating with robots about physical interactions in order to enable more effective robotic collaborators across all human-robot interaction paradigms. The efforts of this project have provided designs for devices, algorithms and systems that allow people to communicate desired actions to robots and to have awareness of robot behavior.
Broader Impact: The results of this project will improve systems where people need to interact with robots performing physical tasks. These advances contribute to the potential use of robots in tasks in human environments, and will contribute to the efforts to bring more widespread use of robots in applications such as light manufacturing, personal assistants, and healthcare.
Intellectual Merit: This project has developed algorithmic approaches to creating robot motions that meet the needs of interactive applications. The project has provided experimental evidence for how people sense and specify physical behaviors and how people respond to different types of interactive robot controls. The project has provided methods that use dynamic cameras to help people monitor behavior. The project has shown how new sensor types can be incorporated into interactive robotics systems. The project has demonstrated how physical aspects of manipulation can be inferred from observations.
Last Modified: 11/29/2023
Modified by: Michael L Gleicher
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