Toward Socially Intelligent Service Robots

In the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (IRL) at Vanderbilt University we seek to develop service robots with a high level of social intelligence and interactivity. In order to achieve this goal, we have identified two main issues for research. The first issue is how to achieve a high level of interaction between the human and the robot. This has lead to the formulation of our philosophy of Human Directed Local Autonomy (HuDL), a guiding principle for research, design, and implementation of service robots. The motivation for integrating humans into a service robot system is to take advantage of human intelligence and skill. Human intelligence can be used to interpret robot sensor data, eliminating computationally expensive and possibly error-prone automated analyses. Human skill is a valuable resource for trajectory and path planning as well as for simplifying the search process. In this paper we present our plans for integrating humans into a service robot system. We present our paradigm for human/robot interaction, HuDL. The second issue is the general problem of system integration, with a specific focus on integrating humans into the service robotic system. This work has lead to the development of the Intelligent Machine Architecture (IMA), a novel software architecture that has been specifically designed to simplify the integration of the many diverse algorithms, sensors, and actuators necessary for socially intelligent service robots. Our testbed system is described, and some example applications of HuDL for aids to the physically disabled are given. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the IMA is also presented.