Planning & Scheduling
Safe and Socially Aware Multi-Robot Coordination in Multi-Human Social Care Settings
Abioye, Ayodeji O., Deshmukh, Jayati, Georgara, Athina, Price, Dominic, Nguyen, Tuyen, Landowska, Aleksandra, Bennaceur, Amel, Fischer, Joel E., Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
This research investigates strategies for multi-robot coordination in multi-human environments. It proposes a multi-objective learning-based coordination approach to addressing the problem of path planning, navigation, task scheduling, task allocation, and human-robot interaction in multi-human multi-robot (MHMR) settings.
A Human-Centered Dynamic Scheduling Architecture for Collaborative Application
Pupa, Andrea, Van Dijk, Wietse, Secchi, Cristian
-- In collaborative robotic applications, human and robot have to work together during a whole shift for executing a sequence of jobs. The performance of the human robot team can be enhanced by scheduling the right tasks to the human and the robot. The scheduling should consider the task execution constraints, the variability in the task execution by the human, and the job quality of the human. Therefore, it is necessary to dynamically schedule the assigned tasks. In this paper, we propose a two-layered architecture for task allocation and scheduling in a collaborative cell. Job quality is explicitly considered during the allocation of the tasks and over a sequence of jobs. The tasks are dynamically scheduled based on the real time monitoring of the human's activities. The effectiveness of the proposed architecture is experimentally validated. In recent years, industrial setting has been supported by a constant increase in the use of collaborative robotics (see e.g. The shift towards collaborative robotics can significantly change the quality of the job for the human. In fact, collaborative robots can take over dull, heavy or dangerous tasks making the life of the human easier.
Time-critical and confidence-based abstraction dropping methods
Schmöcker, Robin, Kampmann, Lennart, Dockhorn, Alexander
One paradigm of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) improvements is to build and use state and/or action abstractions during the tree search. Non-exact abstractions, however, introduce an approximation error making convergence to the optimal action in the abstract space impossible. Hence, as proposed as a component of Elastic Monte Carlo Tree Search by Xu et al., abstraction algorithms should eventually drop the abstraction. In this paper, we propose two novel abstraction dropping schemes, namely OGA-IAAD and OGA-CAD which can yield clear performance improvements whilst being safe in the sense that the dropping never causes any notable performance degradations contrary to Xu's dropping method. OGA-IAAD is designed for time critical settings while OGA-CAD is designed to improve the MCTS performance with the same number of iterations.
Quantum-Assisted Automatic Path-Planning for Robotic Quality Inspection in Industry 4.0
Osaba, Eneko, Garrote, Estibaliz, Miranda-Rodriguez, Pablo, Ciacco, Alessia, Cabanes, Itziar, Mancisidor, Aitziber
--This work explores the application of hybrid quantum-classical algorithms to optimize robotic inspection trajectories derived from Computer-Aided Design (CAD) models in industrial settings. By modeling the task as a 3D variant of the Traveling Salesman Problem--incorporating incomplete graphs and open-route constraints--this study evaluates the performance of two D-Wave-based solvers against classical methods such as GUROBI and Google OR-T ools. Results across five real-world cases demonstrate competitive solution quality with significantly reduced computation times, highlighting the potential of quantum approaches in automation under Industry 4.0. Advances in quantum computing are enabling problem-solving capabilities at a scale beyond brute-force classical simulation [1]. As hardware improves--with more qubits, lower error rates, and faster execution--quantum algorithm research is advancing through both theory and experimentation.
Data Agent: A Holistic Architecture for Orchestrating Data+AI Ecosystems
Sun, Zhaoyan, Wang, Jiayi, Zhao, Xinyang, Wang, Jiachi, Li, Guoliang
Traditional Data+AI systems utilize data-driven techniques to optimize performance, but they rely heavily on human experts to orchestrate system pipelines, enabling them to adapt to changes in data, queries, tasks, and environments. For instance, while there are numerous data science tools available, developing a pipeline planning system to coordinate these tools remains challenging. This difficulty arises because existing Data+AI systems have limited capabilities in semantic understanding, reasoning, and planning. Fortunately, we have witnessed the success of large language models (LLMs) in enhancing semantic understanding, reasoning, and planning abilities. It is crucial to incorporate LLM techniques to revolutionize data systems for orchestrating Data+AI applications effectively. To achieve this, we propose the concept of a 'Data Agent' - a comprehensive architecture designed to orchestrate Data+AI ecosystems, which focuses on tackling data-related tasks by integrating knowledge comprehension, reasoning, and planning capabilities. We delve into the challenges involved in designing data agents, such as understanding data/queries/environments/tools, orchestrating pipelines/workflows, optimizing and executing pipelines, and fostering pipeline self-reflection. Furthermore, we present examples of data agent systems, including a data science agent, data analytics agents (such as unstructured data analytics agent, semantic structured data analytics agent, data lake analytics agent, and multi-modal data analytics agent), and a database administrator (DBA) agent. We also outline several open challenges associated with designing data agent systems.
An RRT* algorithm based on Riemannian metric model for optimal path planning
Zhang, Yu, Zhou, Qi, Yang, Xiao-Song
This paper presents a Riemannian metric-based model to solve the optimal path planning problem on two-dimensional smooth submanifolds in high-dimensional space. Our model is based on constructing a new Riemannian metric on a two-dimensional projection plane, which is induced by the high-dimensional Euclidean metric on two-dimensional smooth submanifold and reflects the environmental information of the robot. The optimal path planning problem in high-dimensional space is therefore transformed into a geometric problem on the two-dimensional plane with new Riemannian metric. Based on the new Riemannian metric, we proposed an incremental algorithm RRT*-R on the projection plane. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is suitable for scenarios with uneven fields in multiple dimensions. The proposed algorithm can help the robot to effectively avoid areas with drastic changes in height, ground resistance and other environmental factors. More importantly, the RRT*-R algorithm shows better smoothness and optimization properties compared with the original RRT* algorithm using Euclidean distance in high-dimensional workspace. The length of the entire path by RRT*-R is a good approximation of the theoretical minimum geodesic distance on projection plane.
Edge Computing and its Application in Robotics: A Survey
Tahir, Nazish, Parasuraman, Ramviyas
The Edge computing paradigm has gained prominence in both academic and industry circles in recent years. By implementing edge computing facilities and services in robotics, it becomes a key enabler in the deployment of artificial intelligence applications to robots. Time-sensitive robotics applications benefit from the reduced latency, mobility, and location awareness provided by the edge computing paradigm, which enables real-time data processing and intelligence at the network's edge. While the advantages of integrating edge computing into robotics are numerous, there has been no recent survey that comprehensively examines these benefits. This paper aims to bridge that gap by highlighting important work in the domain of edge robotics, examining recent advancements, and offering deeper insight into the challenges and motivations behind both current and emerging solutions. In particular, this article provides a comprehensive evaluation of recent developments in edge robotics, with an emphasis on fundamental applications, providing in-depth analysis of the key motivations, challenges, and future directions in this rapidly evolving domain. It also explores the importance of edge computing in real-world robotics scenarios where rapid response times are critical. Finally, the paper outlines various open research challenges in the field of edge robotics.
Best Agent Identification for General Game Playing
Stephenson, Matthew, Newcombe, Alex, Piette, Eric, Soemers, Dennis
We present an efficient and generalised procedure to accurately identify the best performing algorithm for each sub-task in a multi-problem domain. Our approach treats this as a set of best arm identification problems for multi-armed bandits, where each bandit corresponds to a specific task and each arm corresponds to a specific algorithm or agent. We propose an optimistic selection process based on the Wilson score interval (Optimistic-WS) that ranks each arm across all bandits in terms of their potential regret reduction. We evaluate the performance of Optimistic-WS on two of the most popular general game domains, the General Video Game AI (GVGAI) framework and the Ludii general game playing system, with the goal of identifying the highest performing agent for each game within a limited number of trials. Compared to previous best arm identification algorithms for multi-armed bandits, our results demonstrate a substantial performance improvement in terms of average simple regret. This novel approach can be used to significantly improve the quality and accuracy of agent evaluation procedures for general game frameworks, as well as other multi-task domains with high algorithm runtimes.
GS-NBV: a Geometry-based, Semantics-aware Viewpoint Planning Algorithm for Avocado Harvesting under Occlusions
Song, Xiao'ao, Karydis, Konstantinos
Efficient identification of picking points is critical for automated fruit harvesting. Avocados present unique challenges owing to their irregular shape, weight, and less-structured growing environments, which require specific viewpoints for successful harvesting. We propose a geometry-based, semantics-aware viewpoint-planning algorithm to address these challenges. The planning process involves three key steps: viewpoint sampling, evaluation, and execution. Starting from a partially occluded view, the system first detects the fruit, then leverages geometric information to constrain the viewpoint search space to a 1D circle, and uniformly samples four points to balance the efficiency and exploration. A new picking score metric is introduced to evaluate the viewpoint suitability and guide the camera to the next-best view. We validate our method through simulation against two state-of-the-art algorithms. Results show a 100% success rate in two case studies with significant occlusions, demonstrating the efficiency and robustness of our approach. Our code is available at https://github.com/lineojcd/GSNBV
Industrial brain: a human-like autonomous neuro-symbolic cognitive decision-making system
Wang, Junping, Wang, Bicheng, Xuea, Yibo, Xie, Yuan
Resilience non-equilibrium measurement, the ability to maintain fundamental functionality amidst failures and errors, is crucial for scientific management and engineering applications of industrial chain. The problem is particularly challenging when the number or types of multiple co-evolution of resilience (for example, randomly placed) are extremely chaos. Existing end-to-end deep learning ordinarily do not generalize well to unseen full-feld reconstruction of spatiotemporal co-evolution structure, and predict resilience of network topology, especially in multiple chaos data regimes typically seen in real-world applications. To address this challenge, here we propose industrial brain, a human-like autonomous cognitive decision-making and planning framework integrating higher-order activity-driven neuro network and CT-OODA symbolic reasoning to autonomous plan resilience directly from observational data of global variable. The industrial brain not only understands and model structure of node activity dynamics and network co-evolution topology without simplifying assumptions, and reveal the underlying laws hidden behind complex networks, but also enabling accurate resilience prediction, inference, and planning. Experimental results show that industrial brain significantly outperforms resilience prediction and planning methods, with an accurate improvement of up to 10.8\% over GoT and OlaGPT framework and 11.03\% over spectral dimension reduction. It also generalizes to unseen topologies and dynamics and maintains robust performance despite observational disturbances. Our findings suggest that industrial brain addresses an important gap in resilience prediction and planning for industrial chain.