BWIBots: A platform for bridging the gap between AI and human–robot interaction research

Recent progress in both AI and robotics have enabled the development of general purpose robot platforms that are capable of executing a wide variety of complex, temporally extended service tasks in open environments. This article introduces a novel, custom-designed multi-robot platform for research on AI, robotics, and especially human–robot interaction for service robots. Called BWIBots, the robots were designed as a part of the Building-Wide Intelligence (BWI) project at the University of Texas at Austin. The article begins with a description of, and justification for, the hardware and software design decisions underlying the BWIBots, with the aim of informing the design of such platforms in the future. It then proceeds to present an overview of various research contributions that have enabled the BWIBots to better (a) execute action sequences to complete user requests, (b) efficiently ask questions to resolve user requests, (c) understand human commands given in natural language, and (d) understand human intention from afar. The article concludes with a look forward towards future research opportunities and applications enabled by the BWIBot platform

Dexterous Mobility with the uBot-5 Mobile Manipulator

Abstract — We present an initial demonstration of dexterous mobility using the uBot-5, a dynamically balancing mobile manipulator. Dexterous mobility refers generally to a level of bodily resourcefulness that permits the autonomous reassignment of effectors for the purpose of maintaining mobility in a variety of situations. We begin by describing a set of postural stability controllers in terms of a small number of simple control objectives. We then show how the resulting postures support dexterous mobility by enabling a new “knuckle walking ” mobility mode. In a preliminary experiment, we develop this mobility mode by formulating a practical reinforcement learning problem that allows the robot to learn an efficient gait on-line in a single trial. I