Biological inspiration in Human Centred Robotics
Huosheng Hu *
Department of Computer Science, University of Essex
After the recent advancement of computing and robotics technology,
human-centred robotics and personal robots are soon ready to serve us in
our home, hospital, office and everywhere. These robots are mobile,
autonomous, interactive and intelligent, which draws inspiration from
behaviour demonstration of biological systems. Recently, a number of new
application areas have received significant interests in the robotics
community, including entertainment robots, medical robots, education
robots, service robots, etc.
Human Centred Robotics (HCR) concerns with the development of
various kinds of intelligent systems and robots that will be used in
environments coexisting with humans. These systems and robots will be
interactive and useful assistants/companions for people in different
ages, situations, activities and environments in order to improve our
quality of life. Human centred robotics poses a number of challenges.
Firstly, these robots have to deal with uncertainty within the system,
such as sensor noise, actuator inaccuracy, and components failure.
Secondly, they have to handle huge uncertainty in the real world which
is dynamically changing all the time. To catch up these changes in real
time is very difficult since no sensor is able to work in all the
situation and circumstances. Thirdly, human-robot interaction is a key
for success, including communication with and navigation around humans.
Finally, inspiration from biological systems is an important issue to be
addressed in human centred robotics since it could provide some
guidelines to solve the problems.
This seminar presents our current research work toward the
development of advanced theory and technologies for HCR applications,
based on inspiration from biological systems. More specifically,
bio-mimetic system modelling, robot learning by imitation and hands-free
control of wheelchairs are discussed respectively, and some preliminary
results are demonstrated via video.
*
Huosheng Hu received the MSc degree in industrial automation from the
Central South University, China and the PhD degree in robotics from the
University of Oxford. Currently, He is a Professor in Department of
Computer Science, University of Essex, leading the Human Centred
Robotics Group. His research interests include autonomous mobile robots,
human-robot interaction, evolutionary robotics, multi-robot
collaboration, embedded systems, pervasive computing, sensor
integration, RoboCup, intelligent control and networked robotics. He has
published over 200 papers in journals, books and conferences, and
received a number of best paper awards. He is a Chartered Engineer, a
senior member of IEEE, and a member of IEE, AAAI, ACM, IASTED and IAS.
