70 research outputs found
A Review of Verbal and Non-Verbal Human-Robot Interactive Communication
In this paper, an overview of human-robot interactive communication is
presented, covering verbal as well as non-verbal aspects of human-robot
interaction. Following a historical introduction, and motivation towards fluid
human-robot communication, ten desiderata are proposed, which provide an
organizational axis both of recent as well as of future research on human-robot
communication. Then, the ten desiderata are examined in detail, culminating to
a unifying discussion, and a forward-looking conclusion
ViSpec: A graphical tool for elicitation of MTL requirements
One of the main barriers preventing widespread use of formal methods is the
elicitation of formal specifications. Formal specifications facilitate the
testing and verification process for safety critical robotic systems. However,
handling the intricacies of formal languages is difficult and requires a high
level of expertise in formal logics that many system developers do not have. In
this work, we present a graphical tool designed for the development and
visualization of formal specifications by people that do not have training in
formal logic. The tool enables users to develop specifications using a
graphical formalism which is then automatically translated to Metric Temporal
Logic (MTL). In order to evaluate the effectiveness of our tool, we have also
designed and conducted a usability study with cohorts from the academic student
community and industry. Our results indicate that both groups were able to
define formal requirements with high levels of accuracy. Finally, we present
applications of our tool for defining specifications for operation of robotic
surgery and autonomous quadcopter safe operation.Comment: Technical report for the paper to be published in the 2015 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems held in Hamburg,
Germany. Includes 10 pages and 19 figure
From sequence to trajectory and vice versa: solving the inverse QTC problem and coping with real-world trajectories
Spatial interactions between agents carry information of high value to human observers, as exemplified by the high-level interpretations that humans make when watching the Heider and Simmel movie, or other such videos which just contain motions of simple objects, such as points, lines and triangles. However, not all the information contained in a pair of continuous trajectories is important; and thus the need for qualitative descriptions of interaction trajectories arises. Towards that purpose, Qualitative Trajectory Calculus (QTC) has been proposed in (Van de Weghe, 2004). However, the original definition of QTC handles uncorrupted continuous-time trajectories, while real-world signals are noisy and sampled in discrete-time. Also, although QTC presents a method for transforming trajectories to qualitative descriptions, the inverse problem has not yet been studied. Thus, in this paper, after discussing several aspects of the transition from ideal QTC to discrete-time noisy QTC, we introduce a novel algorithm for solving the QTC inverse problem; i.e. transforming qualitative descriptions to archetypal trajectories that satisfy them. Both of these problems are particularly important for the successful application of qualitative trajectory calculus to Human-Robot Interaction
QTC3D: extending the qualitative trajectory calculus to three dimensions
Spatial interactions between agents (humans, animals, or machines) carry information of high value to human or electronic observers. However, not all the information contained in a pair of continuous trajectories is important and thus the need for qualitative descriptions of interaction trajectories arises. The Qualitative Trajectory Calculus (QTC) (Van de Weghe, 2004) is a promising development towards this goal. Numerous variants of QTC have been proposed in the past and QTC has been applied towards analyzing various interaction domains. However, an inherent limitation of those QTC variations that deal with lateral movements is that they are limited to two-dimensional motion; therefore, complex three-dimensional interactions, such as those occurring between flying planes or birds, cannot be captured. Towards that purpose, in this paper QTC3D is presented: a novel qualitative trajectory calculus that can deal with full three-dimensional interactions. QTC3D is based on transformations of the Frenet-Serret frames accompanying the trajectories of the moving objects. Apart from the theoretical exposition, including definition and properties, as well as computational aspects, we also present an application of QTC3D towards modeling bird flight. Thus, the power of QTC is now extended to the full dimensionality of physical space, enabling succinct yet rich representations of spatial interactions between agents
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