Context-Augmented Robotic Interaction Layer (CARIL)

Today, as humans reach beyond the earth to near and deep space, there is obvious and urgent need to augment the capabilities of human astronauts and (ground-) controllers with smarter and more capable automation. In conventional approaches to human-robot interactions for supervisory control paradigms, coordination often breaks down for a variety of reasons and progress toward interactive goals is often impeded due to the inability of the work system to adapt to context shifts. Hence, human-robot teams can be almost entirely non-adaptive. To address these complex problems, CHI Systems and the Institute for Human Machine Cognition have teamed to create a human-robot interaction system based on recent theories and tools developed by CHI Systems leveraging cognitive representations of shared context as basis for a fundamentally new approach to human-robotic interaction. This approach includes a framework for representing context and using it to support decision making and control of automation and will form the core of the proposed solution termed the Context-Augmented Robotic Interaction Layer or CARIL. CARIL will enable efficient and effective human-robot control-oriented cooperation through the use of adaptive behaviors to mediate cooperation between humans and robots. Phase I will focus on development and demonstration of the CARIL concept.

To date, robotic usage on the ISS has been limited to prototype demonstrations, but the envisioned value added by robots has yet to materialize. Our work will take the next steps to providing robotic systems that add value on the ISS. In the short term, we have the potential to merge with existing JSC robotic projects like Robonaut and Valkyrie. IHMC has a project currently working on integrating with these systems in simulation, with plans to validate on the actual hardware in the future. IHMC's ongoing humanoid and UAV work each overlap with many of NASA's goals for robotics. The complexity of NASA's mission would suggest that successful robot projects in that domain would have great potential for transition to commercial domains.

Non-NASA applications of CARIL will include both commercial and DoD contexts. For commercial, we first envision commercial licensing of CARIL directly to robot manufacturers, as well as custom application sales to specific vertical industries which use robotics to mitigate human risk in dangerous working conditions (e.g., nuclear power plants, chemical manufacturing sites, and petrochemical refineries). Second, additional vertical markets include businesses heavily relying on the use of robots and drones to optimize supply-chain and warehouse distribution processes (e.g., Amazon, UPS, and FEDEX). Third, we see a tremendous opportunity to apply CARIL to commercial applications for household and personal-care robots and we will develop a penetration strategy for this market based on evolving consumer application trends. Applications for DoD (military) robots include IED/EOD operations (the Foster-Miller Army TALON robot), surveillance/reconnaissance/assault missions (Gladiator Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicle - TUGV), scout robots (PacBOT), and other multi-purpose robots (Armored Combat Engineer Robot - ACER).

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.