WPI profs receive $1M to study robots

Courtesy of WPI Sonia Chernova, assistant professor of computer science and robotics engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, is developing techniques that will enable average people (as opposed to computer scientists or engineers) to teach robots to do new tasks.

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Two robotics engineering professors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are being awarded a combined $1.04 million over the next three years to study how robots can help out in manufacturing plants and in homes with elderly residents.

Assistant professor Dmitry Berenson will receive $600,000 through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Robotics Initiative to study how robots can work with people to build products in small-scale manufacturing operations. The study will involve creating a library of likely human behaviors so a robot can anticipate what a person will do next in the building process and complement – rather than interfere – with that task.

“Robots allow small manufacturers to enjoy the same cost benefits that large companies have already realized,” Berenson said. “By putting robots on the manufacturing floor, it may be possible to bring many small-scale manufacturing jobs back home.”

In addition, assistant professor Sonia Chernova will receive $425,000 from the NSF to study how the elderly and disabled can train robots to perform simple tasks in their homes. The robots will be programmed with a library of basic functions that can be linked together to create a complete task, Chernova said.

Chernova’s team will recruit hundreds of subjects and study how they go about training robots to do things like fold laundry and set the table. The teaching approaches will then by synthesized to help the robots adopt to a range of instructors.

“Through this work, we will develop models that will allow robots to be more flexible by anticipating how different people might go about teaching them,” she said.