Robotics (cs.RO)

Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel framework that combines large language models (LLMs), digital twins and industrial automation system to enable intelligent planning and control of production processes. Our approach involves developing a digital twin system that contains descriptive information about the production and retrofitting the automation system to offer unified interfaces of fine-granular functionalities or skills executable by automation components or modules. Subsequently, LLM-Agents are designed to interpret descriptive information in the digital twins and control the physical system through RESTful interfaces. These LLM-Agents serve as intelligent agents within an automation system, enabling autonomous planning and control of flexible production. Given a task instruction as input, the LLM-agents orchestrate a sequence of atomic functionalities and skills to accomplish the task. We demonstrate how our implemented prototype can handle un-predefined tasks, plan a production process, and execute the operations. This research highlights the potential of integrating LLMs into industrial automation systems for more agile, flexible, and adaptive production processes, while also underscoring the critical insights and limitations for future work.

Abstract: This paper proposes an adaptive gravity compensation (AGC) control strategy for a cable-driven upper-limb exosuit intended to assist the wearer with lifting tasks. Unlike most model-based control techniques used for this human-robot interaction task, the proposed control design does not assume knowledge of the anthropometric parameters of the wearer's arm and the payload. Instead, the uncertainties in human arm parameters, such as mass, length, and payload, are estimated online using an indirect adaptive control law that compensates for the gravity moment about the elbow joint. Additionally, the AGC controller is agnostic to the desired joint trajectory followed by the human arm. For the purpose of controller design, the human arm is modeled using a 1-DOF manipulator model. Further, a cable-driven actuator model is proposed that maps the assistive elbow torque to the actuator torque. The performance of the proposed method is verified through a co-simulation, wherein the control input realized in MATLAB is applied to the human bio-mechanical model in OpenSim under varying payload conditions. Significant reductions in human effort in terms of human muscle torque and metabolic cost are observed with the proposed control strategy. Further, simulation results show that the performance of the AGC controller converges to that of the gravity compensation (GC) controller, demonstrating the efficacy of AGC-based online parameter learning.

Abstract: The deployment of autonomous robots in various domains has raised significant concerns about their trustworthiness and accountability. This study explores the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) in analyzing ROS 2 logs generated by autonomous robots and proposes a framework for log analysis that categorizes log files into different aspects. The study evaluates the performance of three different language models in answering questions related to StartUp, Warning, and PDDL logs. The results suggest that GPT 4, a transformer-based model, outperforms other models, however, their verbosity is not enough to answer why or how questions for all kinds of actors involved in the interaction.

Abstract: Providing guarantees on the safe operation of robots against edge cases is challenging as testing methods such as traditional Monte-Carlo require too many samples to provide reasonable statistics. Built upon recent advancements in rare-event sampling, we present a model-based method to verify if a robotic system satisfies a Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specification in the face of environment variations and sensor/actuator noises. Our method is efficient and applicable to both linear and nonlinear and even black-box systems with arbitrary, but known, uncertainty distributions. For linear systems with Gaussian uncertainties, we exploit a feature to find optimal parameters that minimize the probability of failure. We demonstrate illustrative examples on applying our approach to real-world autonomous robotic systems.

Abstract: Recently, it has been considering robotics to face world population aging. According to the WHO, in 2050 there will be about 2.1 billion people over 60 years old worldwide causing a persistent growing need of assistance and a shortage of manpower for delivering congruous assistance. Therefore, seniors' QoL is continuously threatened. Socially Assistive Robotics proposes itself as a solution. To improve SARs acceptability, it is necessary to tailor the system's characteristics with respect to the target needs and issues through the analysis of previous and current studies in the HRI field. Through the examination of the state of the art of social robotics in elderly care, past case studies and paper research about SARs' efficiency, it has been proposed two potential solution examples for two different scenarios, applying two different SARs: Pepper and Nao robots.