II-NEW: A Robot Testbed for Real-Time Motion Strategies and Autonomous Personal Assistants

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

This infrastructure proposal supports the acquisition of a personal robot and a high-end multi- GPU workstation to develop a new robot testbed for designing and evaluating the next generation of parallel robot algorithms and open-source software systems on modern commodity computing platforms. The robot platform will be based on a Meka M1 robot, a state-of-the-art robot with compliant, dextrous arms plus camera and range sensors. This robot will be used to develop a new set of motion strategy and planning algorithms and evaluate the capabilities of the robots for two driving applications: (1) assisting older adults and people with disabilities with activities of daily living and (2) active tele-presence to give people in a remote environment the ability to physically interact with people in the robot?s environment. This robot testbed could lead to novel technologies for the development of personal robots for assistance with tasks of daily living and active telepresence. These new capabilities could significantly improve the quality of life for the elderly, people with disabilities, and other individuals. The development of real-time motion strategies could also benefit other areas, such as surgical simulation, CAD/CAM, virtual prototyping, and virtual reality environments. The software libraries developed under this project would be made widely available through the public-domain release for all research and educational activities across science, engineering, and medical domains. Teh research team will also integrate research with education, reach out to under-represented groups via programs such as the IBM-sponsored Girls? summer camps, actively involving undergraduates in the proposed research, and organizing workshops on many-core computing for real-time motion strategies. Finally, the team expects the new robotics curriculum enabled by the proposed equipment acquisition to help increase enrollment in Computer Science.