Award Abstract # 2235043
Collaborative Research: CCRI: Grand: Quori 2.0: Uniting, Broadening, and Sustaining a Research Community Around a Modular Social Robot Platform

NSF Org: IIS
Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
Recipient: OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: April 10, 2023
Latest Amendment Date: September 9, 2024
Award Number: 2235043
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Cindy Bethel
cbethel@nsf.gov
 (703)292-4420
IIS
 Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
CSE
 Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date: April 1, 2023
End Date: March 31, 2028 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $4,161,753.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $3,295,576.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2023 = $1,182,129.00
FY 2024 = $2,113,447.00
History of Investigator:
  • William Smart (Principal Investigator)
    smartw@oregonstate.edu
  • Naomi Fitter (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Oregon State University
1500 SW JEFFERSON AVE
CORVALLIS
OR  US  97331-8655
(541)737-4933
Sponsor Congressional District: 04
Primary Place of Performance: Oregon State University
1500 SW JEFFERSON ST
CORVALLIS
OR  US  97331-8655
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
04
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): MZ4DYXE1SL98
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): CCRI-CISE Cmnty Rsrch Infrstrc
Primary Program Source: 01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002728DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7359
Program Element Code(s): 735900
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.070

ABSTRACT

Quori 2.0: Uniting, Broadening, and Sustaining a Research Community Around a Modular Social Robot Platform


One significant challenge for robotics research is the lack of a common robot with which to work. It is often difficult to compare results if researchers are using different types of robots that often have different shapes, sizes, sensors, and capabilities. To address this challenge, fifty humanoid robots (called "Quori") will be built. The Quori robots developed will be distributed to research teams across the United States. These robots will serve as a standardized robot platform to create a robotics community infrastructure to advance scientific robotics research. This effort builds on the success of a previous project that designed, built, and tested ten prototype Quori robots, and awarded them to a small selection of U.S. research teams. The current project incorporates the lessons learned from the prototype Quori development to improve the design of the robot, adapt it to make it easier to manufacture at scale, and distribute it to a broader set of research teams. The project connects students and researchers who use the Quori robots through online collaboration tools, regular events, and opportunities to work together. This will build a community of roboticists across the country that can learn from each others' work, share ideas, and allow for rapid advancement of research in robotics. A focus of this project is to include new teams of diverse robotics researchers and pair them with more experienced robotics community members. This will increase the diversity of researchers involved in robotics and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) research in the United States. This project will accelerate the pace of research progress, especially in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

This award builds on a successful previous project that designed, implemented, and deployed a limited number of prototype Quori humanoid robots to HRI research teams across the country. The project will use feedback from this initial prototype deployment to redesign the robots to make them better suited for large-scale manufacturing. The central goal of the project is to establish a common hardware and software platform for HRI research and to build a community of researchers around this robot platform. The efforts are strongly influenced by the PR2 Beta Program at Willow Garage, which built a connected community of researchers around the world using the PR2 robot and the now very popular Robot Operating System (ROS). The development of a common hardware and software platform infrastructure, allows students and researchers to rapidly and easily share results and perform replication studies to advance robotics technology in the country. The robots will be distributed based on an inclusive selection criteria that considers the diversity of university types, locations, career stage of researchers, and other factors. The project will build an inclusive community of students and researchers using Quori 2.0 robots, intentionally focusing on mechanisms to bring in new community members, broadening the diversity of the robotics research community, and ensuring they are supported as use the Quori 2.0 platform.

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.

Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.

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