Human robot cooperation planner using plans embedded in objects**This work was undertaken during the EPSRC (via the Centre in Innovative Manufacturing in Intelligent Automation) funded feasibility study named ‘HRI Team Work Study’ (HRITWS) at Bristol Robotics Laboratory

Abstract

A human robot cooperation (HRC) planner for joint assembly tasks is presented. By combining first order logic (FoL) planning and object oriented programming, plans embedded in objects (PeO) can be produced. This concept shifts the focus of planning from actions to objects, thus defining them in terms of objects and combinations of their actions. The produced plans are represented using tree structures, which capture the task execution status in terms of completeness, agents’ roles and actions’ order. The planner and its application program interface (API) were written and developed using SWI-Prolog. This API allowed the planner to take various inputs to create different plans, and simultaneously to get a variety of useful outputs. The planner was tested in a collaborative pipe assembly task as a part of a bigger architecture implemented on the Baxter robot. It was able to generate the plan and achieve successful execution. This proof-of-concept planner shows great potential; allowing for a novel description in the HRC domain and execution of human-robot interaction tasks with industrial production in mind. However, first results are presented here; more work is required to take the work to higher technology readiness levels.