Heterogeneous robots equipped with multi-modal sensors (e.g., UAV, wheeled and legged terrestrial robots) provide rich and complementary functions that may help human operators to accomplish complex tasks in unknown environments. However, seamlessly integrating heterogeneous agents and making them interact and collaborate still arise challenging issues. In this paper, we define a ROS 2 based software architecture that allows to build incarnated heterogeneous multi-agent systems (HMAS) in a generic way. We showcase its effectiveness through a scenario integrating aerial drones, quadruped robots, and human operators (see https://youtu.be/iOtCCticGuk). In addition, agent spatial awareness in unknown outdoor environments is a critical step for realizing autonomous individual movements, interactions, and collaborations. Through intensive experimental measurements, RTK-GPS is shown to be a suitable solution for achieving the required locating accuracy.

In this study, we examined how participants (N = 20) interacted and collaborated with a set of robotic drawers to accomplish a building task. The drawers’ behavior varied along two variables — proactive/reactive and expressive/nonexpressive motions. The results of our study indicated that participants considered an expressive robot to be more involved and interested in the interaction. They also found that while proactive or expressive robots could dominate the interaction, proactivity might negatively affect the participants’ perception of their social status relative to that of the robot’s, while expressiveness did not. This shows the importance of utilizing expressive movements when designing robots that collaborate with human users.