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We argue for the use of Petri nets as a modeling language for the iterative development process of interactive robotic systems. Petri nets, particularly Timed Colored Petri nets (TCPNs), have the potential to unify various phases of the development process — design, specification, simulation, validation, implementation, and deployment. We additionally discuss future directions for creating a domain-specific variant of TCPNs tailored specifically for HRI systems development. 

We investigate how robotic camera systems can offer new capabilities to computer-supported cooperative work through the design, development, and evaluation of a prototype system called Periscope. With Periscope, a local worker completes manipulation tasks with guidance from a remote helper who observes the workspace through a camera mounted on a semi-autonomous robotic arm that is co-located with the worker. Our key insight is that the helper, the worker, and the robot should all share responsibility of the camera view-an approach we call shared camera control. Using this approach, we present a set of modes that distribute the control of the camera between the human collaborators and the autonomous robot depending on task needs. We demonstrate the system's utility and the promise of shared camera control through a preliminary study where 12 dyads collaboratively worked on assembly tasks. Finally, we discuss design and research implications of our work for future robotic camera systems that facilitate remote collaboration.

 

Generating feasible robot motions in real-time requires achieving multiple tasks (i.e., kinematic requirements) simultaneously. These tasks can have a specific goal, a range of equally valid goals, or a range of acceptable goals with a preference toward a specific goal. To satisfy multiple and potentially competing tasks simultaneously, it is important to exploit the flexibility afforded by tasks with a range of goals. In this paper, we propose a real-time motion generation method that accommodates all three categories of tasks within a single, unified framework and leverages the flexibility of tasks with a range of goals to accommodate other tasks. Our method incorporates tasks in a weighted-sum multiple-objective optimization structure and uses barrier methods with novel loss functions to encode the valid range of a task. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method through a simulation experiment that compares it to state-of-the-art alternative approaches, and by demonstrating it on a physical camera-in-hand robot that shows that our method enables the robot to achieve smooth and feasible camera motions. 

Robotic technology can support the creation of new tools that improve the creative process of cinematography. It is crucial to consider the specific requirements and perspectives of industry professionals when designing and developing these tools. In this paper, we present the results from exploratory interviews with three cinematography practitioners, which included a demonstration of a prototype robotic system. We identified many factors that can impact the design, adoption, and use of robotic support for cinematography, including: (1) the ability to meet requirements for cost, quality, mobility, creativity, and reliability; (2) the compatibility and integration of tools with existing workflows, equipment, and software; and (3) the potential for new creative opportunities that robotic technology can open up. Our findings provide a starting point for future co-design projects that aim to support the work of cinematographers with collaborative robots. 

Collaborative robots have the potential to be intelligent, embodied agents that can contribute to remote human collaboration. We explore this paradigm through the design of robot-mounted camera systems for remote assistance. In this extended abstract, we discuss our iterative design process to develop interaction techniques that leverage shared control-based methods to distribute camera control between the agentic robot and human collaborators. 

In this paper, we design and evaluate a novel form of visually-simulated haptic feedback cue for communicating weight in robot teleoperation. We propose that a visuo-proprioceptive cue results from inconsistencies created between the user's visual and proprioceptive senses when the robot's movement differs from the movement of the user's input. In a user study where participants teleoperate a six-DoF robot arm, we demonstrate the feasibility of using such a cue for communicating weight in four telemanipulation tasks to enhance user experience and task performance. 

We present an offline method to generate smooth, feasible motion for robot arms such that end-effector pose goals of a 6-DoF path are matched within acceptable limits specified by the user. Our approach aims to accurately match the position and orientation goals of the given path, and allows deviation from these goals if there is danger of self-collisions, joint-space discontinuities or kinematic singularities. Our method generates multiple candidate trajectories, and selects the best by incorporating sparse user input that specifies what kinds of deviations are acceptable. We apply our method to a range of challenging paths and show that our method generates solutions that achieve smooth, feasible motions while closely approximating the given pose goals and adhering to user specifications. 

Human demonstrations are important in a range of robotics applications, and are created with a variety of input methods. However, the design space for these input methods has not been extensively studied. In this paper, focusing on demonstrations of hand-scale object manipulation tasks to robot arms with two-finger grippers, we identify distinct usage paradigms in robotics that utilize human-to-robot demonstrations, extract abstract features that form a design space for input methods, and characterize existing input methods as well as a novel input method that we introduce, the instrumented tongs. We detail the design specifications for our method and present a user study that compares it against three common input methods: free-hand manipulation, kinesthetic guidance, and teleoperation. Study results show that instrumented tongs provide high quality demonstrations and a positive experience for the demonstrator while offering good correspondence to the target robot.