Human-Robot Collaboration
Capable to position and move accurately, a robot has only limited intelligence, in terms of mobility and manipulation, to cope with complexities, changes, and disturbances of logistics environments. On the other hand, humans are skilful in sophisticated manipulation tasks, highly intelligent in perception and decision making, but are not as good at accurate position control. It is thus highly desirable to combine human and robotic intelligence so as to accomplish complicated logistics tasks. This program aims to develop technologies enabling effective and safe human-robot collaboration in logistics environments where robot-only workcells are not available in manufacturing factories. There are basically two approaches fusing human and robot intelligence: one is to build up a human-robot collaborative system optimizing their strength, and the other is to transfer human intelligence and skills to robots.
