The Role of Roles: Physical Cooperation between Humans and Robots

Since the strict separation of working spaces of humans and robots has experienced a softening due to recent robotics research achievements, close interaction of humans and robots comes rapidly into reach. In this context, physical human–robot interaction raises a number of questions regarding a desired intuitive robot behavior. The continuous bilateral information and energy exchange requires an appropriate continuous robot feedback. Investigating a cooperative manipulation task, the desired behavior is a combination of an urge to fulfill the task, a smooth instant reactive behavior to human force inputs and an assignment of the task effort to the cooperating agents. In this paper, a formal analysis of human–robot cooperative load transport is presented. Three different possibilities for the assignment of task effort are proposed. Two proposed dynamic role exchange mechanisms adjust the robot’s urge to complete the task based on the human feedback. For comparison, a static role allocation strategy not relying on the human agreement feedback is investigated as well. All three role allocation mechanisms are evaluated in a user study that involves large-scale kinesthetic interaction and full-body human motion. Results show tradeoffs between subjective and objective performance measures stating a clear objective advantage of the proposed dynamic role allocation scheme

Towards real multi-criticality scheduling

Componentised systems, in particular those with fault confinement through address spaces, are currently emerging as a hot topic in embedded systems research. This paper extends the unified rate-based scheduling framework RBED in several dimensions to fit the requirements of such systems: we have removed the requirement that the deadline of a task is equal to its period. The introduction of inter-process communication reflects the need to communicate. Additionally we also discuss server tasks, budget replenishment and the low level details needed to deal with the physical reality of systems. While a number of these issues have been studied in previous work in isolation, we focus on the problems discovered and lessons learned when integrating solutions. We report on our experiences implementing the proposed mechanisms in a commercial grade OKL4 microkernel as well as an application with soft real-time and best-effort tasks on top of it

Integrating real time and power management in a real system

Abstract Deploying dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) techniques in a real-time context has generated some interest in recent years. However, most of this work is based on highly simplifying assumptions regarding the cost and benefit of frequency scaling. We have integrated a measurement-based DVFS technique with an EDF based scheduling framework. This enables the use of the dynamic slack caused by the variability of execution time, to reduce energy consumption and thus extend battery life or reduce thermal load. We have tested the approach using hardware instrumentation on a real system. This paper describes not only the theoretical basis for the work, but also our experiences with DVFS when confronted with physical reality

MORPHA: Communication and Interaction with Intelligent, Anthropomorphic Robot Assistants

Robot systems, which are employed outside traditional manufacturing applications, socalled service robots or robot assistants, have by far not reached the economic potential of industrial robots yet. There are several factors, which explain this circumstance. Operating robots in unmodified natural environments inhabited by human beings imposes requirements on the robots, which are incomparably higher than the demands made on the capabilities of industrial robots. These requirements concern the robots' sensory perception capabilities, their mobility and dexterity, and their task planning, reasoning and decision making capabilities. The technology available today meets these demands only to a very limited extend. A limiting factor is also the lack of interfaces, which allow a human-friendly, intuitive, and versatile communication and interaction with the robots. Such interfaces are essential for efficiently programming and instructing the robots, which is in turn a prerequisite for an effective and flexible use of robot assistants

The Robotic Bar -- An Integrated Demonstration of Man-Robot Interaction in a Service Scenario

Coming out of the labs, the first robots are currently appearing on the consumer market. Initially they target rather simple application scenarios ranging from entertainment to home convenience. However, one can expect, that they will capture more complex areas soon. These robots will collaborate and interactively communicate with their human users. All this does require appropriate manmachine interaction technologies and considerable cognitive abilities on the robot's side. Consumer acceptance will strongly depend on the integrated system. Thus, system integration and evaluation of the integrated system become increasingly important. This paper describes our approach to construct a robotic assistance system. We present experience with an integrated technology demonstration and the exposure of the integrated system to the public

The Robotic Bar – An Integrated Demonstration of a Robotic Assistant

Coming out of the labs, the first robots are currently appearing on the consumer market. Initially they target rather simple application scenarios ranging from entertainment to home convenience. However, one can expect, that they will capture more complex areas soon. These robots will have a higher and higher level and a broad range of functional competence, and will collaborate and interactively communicate with their human users. All this requires considerable cognitive abilities on the robot’s side and appropriate man-machine interaction technologies. Apart from further development of individual functions and technologies it is crucial to build and evaluate fully integrated systems. This paper describes our approach to construct a robotic assistance system. We present experience with an integrated technology demonstration and the exposure of the integrated system to the public