Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

This proposal requests funding to purchase a humanoid robot to facilitate research in general area of cognitive robotics. The research objectives are to develop a human robot interaction (HRI) research program and to demonstrate feasibility of using them in industrial settings. Under the HRI it is expected to develop research in several areas, namely, behaviour based control of humanoid robots, supervised learning through hand/eye coordination, humanoid environment modelling and localization and multi-robot coordination and control.  The initial research is directed towards underground mining and food processing. The behaviour modulation for humanoid includes formation of behaviours while learning from human activities (or behaviours) and translation them in to a sequence of poses to produce joint motions for hands and legs of a humanoid. The second goal of this research is to investigate supervised learning through interactive hand/eye coordination and thereby execution of high level task by humanoids in a cooperative manner. This involves visual perception and behaviour based control for trajectory planning of the humanoid arms. The third issue is related to environment modelling and localization. The proposed research focuses on developing tracking techniques for humanoid system to localize using visual perception. Novel cognitive control architectures will be developed to facilitate coordinated control of multiple robots and humanoids.The equipment proposed here is to extend a new area of research in mobile robotics. Currently the Intelligent Systems Lab at Memorial University has the capacity to work on advanced robotics related research. Addition of a mobile humanoid system would allow this laboratory to perform research using state of the art equipment, particularly to produce highly qualified personnel in areas related to emerging technologies. The applicants have sufficient research background to facilitate major research topics in intelligent systems and addition of this equipment will be a major step towards next generation robotics for industry.