Related papers: Beyond Collision Avoidance: Multi-Robot Yielding a…
Mobile robots are increasingly being deployed in public spaces such as shopping malls, airports, and urban sidewalks. Most of these robots are designed with human-aware motion planning capabilities but are not designed to communicate with…
Emergency evacuation describes a complex situation involving time-critical decision-making by evacuees. Mobile robots are being actively explored as a potential solution to provide timely guidance. In this work, we study a robot-guided…
Robots in urban environments will inevitably encounter situations beyond their capabilities (e.g., delivery robots unable to press traffic light buttons), necessitating bystander assistance. These spontaneous collaborations possess…
With robots leaving factories and entering less controlled domains, possibly sharing the space with humans, safety is paramount and multimodal awareness of the body surface and the surrounding environment is fundamental. Taking inspiration…
Human-robot interaction frequently involves physical proximity or contact. In human-human settings, people flexibly accept, reject, or tolerate such approaches depending on the relationship and context. We explore the design of a robot's…
Multi-robot systems are increasingly being used for critical applications such as rescuing injured people, delivering food and medicines, and monitoring key areas. These applications usually involve navigating at high speeds through…
Understanding collision avoidance behavior is of key importance in traffic safety research and for designing and evaluating advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles. While existing experimental work has primarily focused…
Nowadays, robots are increasingly operated in environments shared with humans, where conflicts between human and robot behaviors may compromise safety. This paper presents a proactive behavioral conflict avoidance framework based on the…
There has been a plethora of work towards improving robot perception and navigation, yet their application in hazardous environments, like during a fire or an earthquake, is still at a nascent stage. We hypothesize two key challenges here:…
Hospital patient falls remain a critical and costly challenge worldwide. While conventional fall prevention systems typically rely on post-fall detection or reactive alerts, they also often suffer from high false positive rates and fail to…
We present a viewpoint-based non-linear Model Predictive Control (MPC) for evacuation guiding robots. Specifically, the proposed MPC algorithm enables evacuation guiding robots to track and guide cooperative human targets in emergency…
As robots are being increasingly used in close proximity to humans and objects, it is imperative that robots operate safely and efficiently under real-world conditions. Yet, the environment is seldom known perfectly. Noisy sensors and…
In many human-in-the-loop robotic applications such as robot-assisted surgery and remote teleoperation, predicting the intended motion of the human operator may be useful for successful implementation of shared control, guidance virtual…
The use of autonomous systems in medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) scenarios is promising, but existing implementations overlook key insights from human-robot interaction (HRI) research. Studies on human-machine teams demonstrate that human…
Recent research has examined the possibility of using robots to guide evacuees to safe exits during emergencies. Yet, there are many factors that can impact a person's decision to follow a robot. Being able to model how an evacuee follows…
Collision avoidance in unknown obstacle-cluttered environments may not always be feasible. This paper focuses on an emerging paradigm shift in which potential collisions with the environment can be harnessed instead of being avoided…
To operate safely and efficiently, autonomous warehouse/delivery robots must be able to accomplish tasks while navigating in dynamic environments and handling the large uncertainties associated with the motions/behaviors of other robots…
Understanding human intentions is critical for safe and effective human-robot collaboration. While state of the art methods for human goal prediction utilize learned models to account for the uncertainty of human motion data, that data is…
The distance at which a mobile robot reacts to a person strongly impacts various qualities of the human-robot interaction. In this paper, we focus on the navigation of a mobile delivery robot platform in a residential indoor hallway…
Exploration of extreme or remote environments such as Mars is often recognized as an opportunity for multi-robot systems. However, this poses challenges for maintaining robust inter-robot communication without preexisting infrastructure. It…