TechRxiv
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HOTSPOT: An Ad Hoc Teamwork Platform for Mixed Human-Robot Teams

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posted on 2021-11-19, 08:59 authored by João G. Ribeiro, Luis Müller Henriques, Sérgio Colcher, Julio Cesar DuarteJulio Cesar Duarte, Francisco S. Melo, Ruy Luiz Milidiú, Alberto Sardinha
Ad hoc teamwork is a research topic in multi-agent systems whereby an agent (the "ad hoc agent") must successfully collaborate with a set of unknown agents (the "teammates") without any prior coordination or communication protocol. However, research in ad hoc teamwork is predominantly focused on agent-only teams, but not in agent-human teams, which we believe is an exciting research avenue and has enormous application potential in human-robot teams. This paper will tap into this potential by proposing HOTSPOT, the first framework for ad hoc teamwork in human-robot teams. Our framework comprises two main modules, addressing the two key challenges in the interaction between a robot acting as the ad hoc agent and human teammates. First, a decision-theoretic module that is responsible for all task-related decision making (task identification, teammate identification, and planning). Second, a communication module that uses natural language processing in order to parse all communication between the robot and the human. To evaluate our framework, we use a task where a mobile robot and a human cooperatively collect objects in an open space, illustrating the main features of our framework in a real-world task.

Funding

Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Research and Development in Lisbon

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

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Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Human-robOt TeamS without PrecoOrdinaTion

EU Horizon 2020

Assisting teams on the fly: Applying adhoc teamwork to hybrid teams of humans and robots

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

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History

Email Address of Submitting Author

duarte@ime.eb.br

ORCID of Submitting Author

0000-0001-6656-1247

Submitting Author's Institution

Instituto Militar de Engenharia

Submitting Author's Country

  • Brazil