Principal Investigator Julie Shah
New uses of robotics in traditionally manual manufacturing processes require the careful choreography of human and robotic agents to support safe and efficient coordinated work. Tasks must be allocated among agents and scheduled to meet temporal deadlines and spatial restrictions on agent proximity. These systems must also be capable of replanning on-the-fly to adapt to disturbances in the schedule and to respond to people working in close physical proximity. We are developing fast, near optimal task assignment and scheduling algorithms that scale to multiagent, factory-size problems and support on-the-fly replanning with temporal and spatial-proximity constraints. We demonstrate that this capability enables human and robotic agents to effectively work together in close proximity to perform manufacturing-relevant tasks, including multi-robot composite material placement, drilling, and robotic assistance in manual tasks. This research is performed in collaboration with Boeing Research and Technology.