Robotics

We study the autonomous exploration task in indoor environments for the mobile ground robot. We propose a three-stage exploration strategy: viewpoint generation, viewpoint scoring, and viewpoint selection, to make the algorithm agnostic to the robot’s planning and control modules. In particular, we propose the Learning to Explore (L2E) framework, which formulates the scoring and selection stages as a learning

With modern warehouses becoming more automated, there is a growing opportunity to test and validate material handling concepts throughout the project life cycle. Emulation and digital twin pose a capability for material handling system validation from the ideation stage through post-implementation. An emulation model is a virtual replica of a physical system, and digital twin is a transformation of an emulation

This paper describes the development of algorithms that decide when to move, where to move, and how to look for people in a home environment. We introduce a design framework as a tool to guide the development of a social robot to proactively be with people for companionship and assistance in the home. Through a series of experiments ranging from simulations to longitudinal A/B studies, we demonstrate how

For social robots like Astro which interact with and adapt to the daily movements of users within the home, realistic simulation of human activity is needed for feature development and testing. This paper presents a framework for simulating daily human activity patterns in home environments at scale, supporting manual configurability of different personas or activity patterns, variation of activity timings

For social robots to successfully integrate into daily life in home environments, they will need reliable models of the way people perceive and use space in the home. This paper explores the problem of obtaining annotated training data at scale for subjective judgments about spatial locations. Focusing on the use case of identifying good and bad parking spots for a social robot operating in a home environment