CoBot Robots

We are driven by our vision of multiple autonomous intelligent mobile robots capable of robustly performing service tasks and interacting with humans in our indoor environments. Our CoBot robots follow a novel symbiotic autonomy, in which the robots are aware of their perceptual, physical, and reasoning limitations and proactively ask for help from humans, for example for object manipulation actions. (The CoBot robots, at this time, do not have arms.) We pursue research in particular in effective real-time mobile robot localization and navigation algorithms, symbiotic human-robot interaction, and multi-task multi-robot dynamic task planning. The CoBot robots are capable of autonomous localization and navigation in our Gates Hillman Center using the Kinect depth-camera, WiFi, and/or LIDAR. We first released one of our CoBot robots, CoBot-2, to all the residents of GHC on September 23, 2011. In its first 3 hours of operation, from 1pm to 4pm, its schedule was completely booked. Send us (people below) email if you would like to schedule tasks for CoBot!

CoBot Researchers

Manuela Veloso, Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, Stephanie Rosenthal, Susana Brandao, Cetin Mericli, Tom Kollar, Mehdi Samadi, Tekin Mericli, Carlos Aguero, Juan Pablo Mendoza, Max Korein
We are very thankful to Mike Licitra for the design and construction of the CoBot robots.
The CoBot robots are part of an NSF-funded research project (webpage under construction).

CoBot Research Directions

• Indoor Mobile Robot Localization
  
• Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction
  
• User-Centered Task Planning and Scheduling
  

Video of CoBot Executing Tasks

CoBot Publications

• Corrective Gradient Refinement for Mobile Robot Localization,
  Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of IROS'11, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Francisco, CA, September 2011.
• Learning Accuracy and Availability of Humans who Help Mobile Robots,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Manuela Veloso, and Anind Dey.
  In Proceedings of AAAI'11, the Twenty-Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
• Dynamic User Task Scheduling for Mobile Robots,
  Brian Coltin and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Automated Action Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robots, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
• Task Behavior and Interaction Planning for a Mobile Service Robot that Occasionally Requires Help,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Manuela Veloso, and Anind Dey.
  In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Automated Action Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robots, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
• Effective Semi-autonomous Telepresence,
  Brian Coltin, Joydeep Biswas, Dean Pomerleau, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the RoboCup Symposium, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2011.
• Fast Sampling Plane Filtering, Polygon Construction and Merging from Depth Images,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  Presented at the RGB-D Workshop at RSS 2011, San Francisco, CA, July 2011.
• Depth Camera based Localization and Navigation for Indoor Mobile Robots,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  Presented at the RGB-D Workshop at RSS 2011, San Francisco, CA, July 2011.
• Is Someone in this Office Available to Help Me? Proactively Seeking Help from Spatially-Situated Humans,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Manuela Veloso, and Anind K. Dey.
  Journal of Intelligent Robotic Systems, 2011.
• Mixed-initiative long-term interactions with an all-day-companion robot,
  Stephanie Rosenthal and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Dialog on Robots. AAAI Press, November 2010.
• An Effective Personal Mobile Robot Agent Through Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Joydeep Biswas, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of AAMAS'10, the Ninth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Toronto, Canada, pp. 915-922, May 2010.
• Using Symbiotic Relationships with Humans to Help Robots Overcome Limitations,
  Stephanie Rosenthal and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the AAMAS'10 Workshop on Collaborative Human/AI Control for Interactive Experiences, Toronto, Canada, May 2010.
• WiFi Localization and Navigation for Autonomous Indoor Mobile Robots,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of ICRA, Anchorage, AL, May 2010.