Treasure Hunt Project

The vision that drives this work is that teams of robots and humans will inevitably be an integral part of our future. Robots and humans will dynamically engage as partners in solving complex, potentially adversarial, tasks by optimally joining their complementary capabilities. These teams will use a highly efficient means for communication between humans and robot, speech, because it is the most efficient modality for highly mobile agents operating in changing environments that need to deal with rapidly evolving situations.

There are significant, but not unachievable, challenges that must be met to realize this vision. These challenges include robust operation across multiple environments, building capabilities that are applicable across multiple robot types, building teams of robots that improve over time, and natural interactions between humans and robots. Specifically, we tackle three principal research agendas: efficient dynamic team formation, effective human-robot communication via speech, and robust human-robot operations in multiple dynamic, potentially adversarial environments.