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Spring 2021 GRASP SFI: “Considerations for Human-Robot Collaboration”
March 17, 2021 at 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Abstract: The field of robotics has evolved over the past few decades. We’ve seen robots progress from the automation of repetitive tasks in manufacturing to the autonomy of mobilizing in unstructured environments to the cooperation of swarm robots that are centralized or decentralized. These abilities have required advances in robotic hardware, modeling, and artificial intelligence. The next frontier is robots collaborating in complex tasks with human teammates, in environments traditionally configured for humans. While solutions to this challenge must utilize all the advances of robotics, the human element adds a unique aspect that must be addressed. Collaborating with a human teammate means that the robot must have a contextual understanding of the task as well as all participant’s roles. We will discuss what constitutes an effective teammate and how we can capture this behavior in a robotic collaborator.
Monroe Kennedy III
Assistant Mechanical Engineering Professor, Stanford University
Monroe Kennedy III is an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He leads the Assistive Robotics and Manipulation laboratory (arm.stanford.edu), which will develop robotic assistants by focusing on combining modeling and control techniques together with machine learning tools. Together, these techniques will improve performance for tasks that are highly dynamic, require dexterity, have considerable complexity, and require human-robot collaboration. Prof. Kennedy received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and Masters in Robotics at the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Dr. Vijay Kumar, with a focus in robotics in the GRASP Lab. He was the recipient of GEM and NSF graduate fellowships. During his graduate studies, his research focused on increasing the abilities and effectiveness of robotic mobile manipulators performing complex service tasks in unstructured environments with considerations for working alongside human collaborators.