Award

iRobot Corporation and the Brown University Robotics Lab propose to develop a system allowing natural interactions between human operators and robots. The goal of the Natural Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) project is to utilize different verbal and non-verbal modes of communication between humans and robots, and ultimately demonstrate a more natural, less stressful, and more fully integrated method for control of robotics resources. During Phase I, we will 1) evaluate the use of gesture and speech recognition to provide the operator with an intuitive means of communicating to the robot, 2) evaluate the use of dialogue-based communication systems and humanlike gestures or character representations to provide the robot a naturally-understood way of communicating with the human operator, and 3) we will enlist the discussion and comments from end-user robot operators on our proposed HRI, including their usability and their utility for use in typical field operations.