Our CoBots model both human users such as visitors to understand when they may be thirsty, for example, and when they may be interested in hearing information about the building as they navigate between meetings. Additionally, the CoBots model human helpers in the environment in order to reason about their different availabilities and accuracies and determine who to ask for help.
CoBots offer coffee to visitors they escort in the morning.
CoBots are capable of autonomous localization and navigation and perform tasks such as transporting objects and escorting people around the building. However, as with many robots, they have physical limitations and uncertainty which can affect their task performance. CoBots overcome those limitations by proactively seeking humans in the environment to ask for help. Humans have incentives to help the robots in order to increase the abilities of the robots to complete tasks for them.
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Localization Help (September 2010) |
Using the Elevator (July 2011) |
While CoBots can model some things about the human users, they are not perfect. Users can ask for information from CoBots when the CoBots do not proactively offer it. In the video, CoBots can help visitors find out more information about their meeting hosts.
Visitors can ask CoBots about their meetings