Robotics in the Home, Office, and Playing Field

Abstract

Robots are gradually entering into diverse application domains such as home, office, and playing field. This article presents advanced research activities related to these domains. First is RoboCup which is an attempt to promote AI and robotics research by providing a common task for evaluation of various performance, theories, algorithms, and robot architectures. In order for robots (both physical robots and soft agents) to play a soccer game reasonably well, a wide range of technologies need to be integrated and a number of technical breakthrough must be accomplished. The recent results from the last two RoboCups are reviewed and future leagues are introduced. Second, the richer domain of service robotics has also received significant interest recently. The task here is to serve as a human assistant in an office or domestic environment, for tasks like cleaning and delivery. The human-robot interaction is a key issue to success, which poses new challenges in terms of integration of spoken dialogue, gestures, body language, etc. In addition mobile manipulation and safe navigation around humans is essential to success. These two areas integrates many different disciplines including control, perception, natural language processing, hybrid systems and handling of uncertainty, and applied to tour guiding, mail delivery, domestic services, and rescue activities.