Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

When multiple agents interact in order to perform a collaborative task, conflicts will arise over access to shared resources or when one agent’s ability to act relies on the actions of another agent. In such cases, even perfectly cooperative agents will encounter problems due to imperfect knowledge of each other’s behavior, requiring them to communicate with each other. The CHARM project seeks to develop robot assistants which work alongside human workers in a manufacturing environment. Towards this goal, we have studied nonverbal cues for timing coordination between human collaborators. We have modeled these cues for use with robots and software systems and validated them through humanrobot interaction studies. This paper provides an overview of these studies, as well as a high-level description of a system currently under development which is intended to allow a robot to model the time required for individual human workers to complete the tasks to which they are assigned and to adapt its timing and work pace to match that of its human collaborators.