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This article describes the current state of our research on anthropomorphic robots. Our aim is to make the reader familiar with the two basic principles our work is based on: anthropomorphism and dynamics. The principle of anthropomorphism means a restriction to human-like robots which use version, audition and touch as their only sensors so that natural man-machine interaction is possible. The principle of dynamics stands for the mathematical framework based on which our robots generate their behavior. Both principles have their root in the idea that concepts of biological behavior and information processing can be exploited to control technical systems.
As service robotics research advances rapidly, availability of objective, reproducible test specifications and evaluation criteria and also of benchmarking is more and more felt to be desirable in the community. As a first step towards benchmarking, in this paper we propose a formalization of tests - exemplified for domestic grasp&place tasks. The underlying philosophy of our approach is to confront the robot system in a black-box manner with requirements of a “rational customer”, and characterize the performance of the system in an objective way by the outcomes of a test-suite tailored to this scenario. A formalized single test description consists of a clear and reproducible specification of the robot’s task and the full context on the one hand, and a number of figures which objectively characterize the test result on the other hand. We illustrate this methodology for the domestic assistance scenario.
CoRA is a robotic assistant whose task is to collaborate with a human operator on simple manipulation or handling tasks. Its sensory channels comprising vision, audition, haptics, and force sensing are used to extract perceptual information about speech, gestures and gaze of the operator, and object recognition. The anthropomorphic robot arm makes goal-directed movements to pick up and hand-over objects. The human operator may mechanically interact with the arm by pushing it away (haptics) or by taking an object out of the robot’s gripper (force sensing). The design objective has been to exploit the human operator’s intuition by modeling the mechanical structure, the senses, and the behaviors of the assistant on human anatomy, human perception, and human motor behavior.
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.