English

HARMONIC: Cognitive and Control Collaboration in Human-Robotic Teams

Robotics 2025-07-11 v3 Artificial Intelligence Multiagent Systems

Abstract

This paper describes HARMONIC, a cognitive-robotic architecture that integrates the OntoAgent cognitive framework with general-purpose robot control systems applied to human-robot teaming (HRT). HARMONIC incorporates metacognition, meaningful natural language communication, and explainability capabilities required for developing mutual trust in HRT. Through simulation experiments involving a joint search task performed by a heterogeneous team of two HARMONIC-based robots and a human operator, we demonstrate heterogeneous robots that coordinate their actions, adapt to complex scenarios, and engage in natural human-robot communication. Evaluation results show that HARMONIC-based robots can reason about plans, goals, and team member attitudes while providing clear explanations for their decisions, which are essential requirements for realistic human-robot teaming.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2409.18047,
  title  = {HARMONIC: Cognitive and Control Collaboration in Human-Robotic Teams},
  author = {Sanjay Oruganti and Sergei Nirenburg and Marjorie McShane and Jesse English and Michael K. Roberts and Christian Arndt and Sahithi Kamireddy and Carlos Gonzalez and Mingyo Seo and Luis Sentis},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.18047},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:58:27.711Z