CoBot Robots

On November 18, 2014, the CoBot robots jointly reached 1,000km of autonomous localization and navigation!
Congratulations, in particular, to Joydeep Biswas!

We are driven by our vision of multiple autonomous intelligent mobile robots capable of robustly performing service tasks and interacting with humans in our indoor environments. Our CoBot robots follow a novel symbiotic autonomy, in which the robots are aware of their perceptual, physical, and reasoning limitations and proactively ask for help from humans, for example for object manipulation actions. (The CoBot robots, at this time, do not have arms.) We pursue research in particular in effective real-time mobile robot localization and navigation algorithms, symbiotic human-robot interaction, and multi-task multi-robot dynamic task planning. The CoBot robots are capable of reliably autonomously localization and navigation in our buildings (Gates Hillman Center and Newell and Simon Hall) using the Kinect depth-camera, WiFi, and/or LIDAR. We first released one of our CoBot robots, CoBot-2, to all the residents of GHC on September 23, 2011. In its first 3 hours of operation, from 1pm to 4pm, its schedule was completely booked. Longterm deployment logs of the CoBots, including odometry, sensor readings, and location estimates are available for download from here.

CoBot Researchers

Manuela Veloso, Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, Stephanie Rosenthal, Susana Brandao, Cetin Mericli, Tom Kollar, Mehdi Samadi, Tekin Mericli, Carlos Aguero, Juan Pablo Mendoza, Max Korein, Richard Wang
We are very thankful to Mike Licitra for the design and construction of the CoBot robots.
The research on the CoBot robots is funded by NSF.

CoBot Research Directions

• Indoor Mobile Robot Localization
  
• Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction
  
• User-Centered Task Planning and Scheduling
  

Video of CoBot's History

Video of CoBot Executing Tasks

CoBot Publications

• Localization and Navigation of the CoBots Over Long-term Deployments,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  International Journal of Robotics Research, December 2013, vol. 32, no. 14, pages 1679-1694.
• CoBots: Collaborative Robots Servicing Multi-Floor Buildings, Video and Extended abstract
  Manuela Veloso, Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, Stephanie Rosenthal, Tom Kollar, Cetin Mericli, Mehdi Samadi, Susana Brandao, and Rodrigo Ventura.
  In Proceedings of IROS'12, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Episodic Non-Markov Localization,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of ICRA'14, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Hong Kong, China, June 2014.
• Depth Camera Based Indoor Mobile Robot Localization and Navigation,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of ICRA'12, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, St. Paul, MN, May 2012.
• Multi-Sensor Mobile Robot Localization For Diverse Environments,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the RoboCup Symposium, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, July 2013.
• Optimizing for transfers in a multi-vehicle collection and delivery problem, (Best Paper Award)
  Brian Coltin and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS'12), Baltimore, USA, November 2012.
• Planar Polygon Extraction and Merging from Depth Images,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of IROS'12, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Fast Human Detection for Indoor Mobile Robots Using Depth Images,
  Benjamin Choi, Cetin Mericli, Joydeep Biswas, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of ICRA'13, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Karlsruhe, Germany, June 2013.
• Planar Polygon Extraction and Merging from Depth Images,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of IROS'12, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Motion Interference Detection in Mobile Robots,
  Juan Pablo Mendoza, Manuela Veloso, and Reid Simmons.
  In Proceedings of IROS'12, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• CoBots: Collaborative Robots Servicing Multi-Floor Buildings, Video and Extended abstract
  Manuela Veloso, Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, Stephanie Rosenthal, Tom Kollar, Cetin Mericli, Mehdi Samadi, Susana Brandao, and Rodrigo Ventura.
  In Proceedings of IROS'12, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Mobile Robot Fault Detection based on Redundant Information Statistics,
  Juan Pablo Mendoza, Manuela Veloso, and Reid Simmons.
  In Workshop at IROS'12 on "Safety in human-robot coexistence and interaction: How can standardization and research benefit from each other?", Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Experience guided achievable push plan generation for passive mobile objects, (Extended abstract).
  Tekin Mericli, Manuela Veloso, and H. Levent Akin.
  In Workshop at IROS'12 on "Beyond Robot Grasping - Modern Approaches for Dynamic Manipulation", Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Symbiotic-Autonomous Service Robots for User-Requested Tasks in a Multi-Floor Building,
  Manuela Veloso, Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, Stephanie Rosenthal, Susana Brandao, Tekin Mericli, and Rodrigo Ventura.
  In Workshop at IROS'12 on "Cognitive Assistive Systems", Vilamoura, Portugal, October 2012.
• Mobile Robot Planning to Seek Help with Spatially-Situated Tasks,
  Stephanie Rosenthal and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of AAAI'12, the Twenty-Sixth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, Canada, July 2012.
• Using the Web to Interactively Learn to Find Objects,
  Mehdi Samadi, Thomas Kollar, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of AAAI'12, the Twenty-Sixth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Toronto, Canada, July 2012.
• Personalized Guided Tour by Multiple Robots through Semantic Profile Definition and Dynamic Redistribution of Participants,
  Anna Hristoskova, Carlos Aguero, Manuela Veloso, and Filip De Turck.
  In Proceedings of the 8th International Cognitive Robotics Workshop at AAAI-12, Toronto, Canada, July 2012.
• Experience Guided Mobile Manipulation Planning,
  Tekin Mericli, Manuela Veloso, and H. Levent Akin.
  In Proceedings of the 8th International Cognitive Robotics Workshop at AAAI-12, Toronto, Canada, July 2012.
• Enabling Robots to Find and Fetch Objects by Querying the Web,
  Thomas Kollar, Mehdi Samadi, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of AAMAS'12, the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Valencia, Spain, June 2012.
• Depth Camera Based Indoor Mobile Robot Localization and Navigation,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of ICRA'12, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, St. Paul, MN, May 2012.
• Transparent Multi-Robot Communication Exchange for Executing Robot Behaviors,
  Carlos Aguero and Manuela Veloso.
  In Highlights on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems - 10th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (PAAMS 2012), volume 156 of Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, pages 215--222. Springer, April 2012.
• Corrective Gradient Refinement for Mobile Robot Localization,
  Joydeep Biswas, Brian Coltin, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of IROS'11, the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Francisco, CA, September 2011.
• Learning Accuracy and Availability of Humans who Help Mobile Robots,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Manuela Veloso, and Anind Dey.
  In Proceedings of AAAI'11, the Twenty-Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
• Dynamic User Task Scheduling for Mobile Robots,
  Brian Coltin and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Automated Action Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robots, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
• Task Behavior and Interaction Planning for a Mobile Service Robot that Occasionally Requires Help,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Manuela Veloso, and Anind Dey.
  In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Automated Action Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robots, San Francisco, CA, August 2011.
• Effective Semi-autonomous Telepresence,
  Brian Coltin, Joydeep Biswas, Dean Pomerleau, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the RoboCup Symposium, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2011.
• Fast Sampling Plane Filtering, Polygon Construction and Merging from Depth Images,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  Presented at the RGB-D Workshop at RSS 2011, San Francisco, CA, July 2011.
• Depth Camera based Localization and Navigation for Indoor Mobile Robots,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  Presented at the RGB-D Workshop at RSS 2011, San Francisco, CA, July 2011.
• Is Someone in this Office Available to Help Me? Proactively Seeking Help from Spatially-Situated Humans,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Manuela Veloso, and Anind K. Dey.
  Journal of Intelligent Robotic Systems, 2011.
• Mixed-initiative long-term interactions with an all-day-companion robot,
  Stephanie Rosenthal and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Dialog on Robots. AAAI Press, November 2010.
• An Effective Personal Mobile Robot Agent Through Symbiotic Human-Robot Interaction,
  Stephanie Rosenthal, Joydeep Biswas, and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of AAMAS'10, the Ninth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Toronto, Canada, pp. 915-922, May 2010.
• Using Symbiotic Relationships with Humans to Help Robots Overcome Limitations,
  Stephanie Rosenthal and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of the AAMAS'10 Workshop on Collaborative Human/AI Control for Interactive Experiences, Toronto, Canada, May 2010.
• WiFi Localization and Navigation for Autonomous Indoor Mobile Robots,
  Joydeep Biswas and Manuela Veloso.
  In Proceedings of ICRA, Anchorage, AL, May 2010.