Anticipating a Partner’s Moves

Imagine an industrial robot strong enough to lift an engine block and perceptive enough to safely reposition and rotate that hunk of metal while a human attaches it to the vehicle or bolts on additional parts. Manufacturers such as Ford Motor Company have eyed this potential use of robotics as a way to add flexibility to assembly lines and reduce the need for expensive reconfigurations. After three years of work, a team from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI) recently demonstrated the integration of perception and action needed to make it a reality. "We want to have robots help humans do tasks more efficiently," said Ruixuan Liu, a Ph.D. candidate in robotics. That means developing systems that let the robot track the progress of a human partner at an assembly task and anticipate the partner's next move. In a demonstration for Ford researchers in October, the team used a wooden box attached to a robotic arm to show how these systems might work.