Effects of the Human Presence among Robots in the ARIAC 2023 Industrial Automation Competition

Leandro Buss becker; Anthony Downs; Craig Schlenoff; Justin Albrecht; Zeid Kootbally; Angelo Ferrando; Rafael Cardoso; Michael Fisher

doi:10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6

Effects of the Human Presence among Robots in the ARIAC 2023 Industrial Automation Competition

Leandro Buss becker^* (Corresponding Author)
, Anthony Downs
, Craig Schlenoff
, Justin Albrecht
, Zeid Kootbally
, Angelo Ferrando
, Rafael Cardoso
, Michael Fisher

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

4 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

ARIAC is a robotic simulation competition promoted by NIST annually since 2017, aiming to present competitors’ with contemporary industry problems to be solved using agile robotics. For the 2023 competition, ARIAC competitors must perform assembly and kitting tasks by controlling four autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), one floor-based robot, and one ceiling-based (Gantry) robot in an attempt to overcome a range of agility challenges in the supplied simulated environment, itself based on the Robot Operating System (ROS 2) and Gazebo. The 2023 competition also included a “human” agility challenge, comprising a (simulated) human operator working among robots on the factory floor. This development was motivated by the fact that, while robots and automation play an increasingly significant role in modern manufacturing, there still remains a close relationship between machines and humans. They should complement each other’s strengths and cover each other’s limitations while also observing any required safety rules. For example, the ISO standard “Robots and Robotic Devices – Collaborative robots” (ISO 15066:2016) prescribes the distances required between humans and robots. Within the ARIAC simulation environment, each human operator is controlled using autonomous Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents. At the same time, competitors can monitor the position of each human operator at any time by subscribing to the relevant ROS topic. In this article, we analyse the effects of this (simulated) human presence in the 2023 ARIAC competition and perform a detailed analysis of how the three different human personalities that were implemented affect the assembly tasks undertaken at the four different locations of the assembly stations. Given how the system is currently implemented, it appears that the influence of each encoded personality on the competitors is not as predictable as anticipated. We expand on why this may be a problem when addressing real collaborative spaces involving humans and industrial robots and the improvements that can be undertaken to mitigate the ensuing problems.

Original language	English
Number of pages	15
Journal	Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
Volume	110
Issue number	112
Early online date	31 Jul 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6
Publication status	Published - 31 Jul 2024

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements
The authors thank all NIST employees and interns involved in running ARIAC 2023 and, most importantly, to the teams that took part in the competition.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Manchester and by the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies programme.

Keywords

Human-robot collaboration
Intelligent systems
BDI agents
robot motion planning

Access to Document

10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6Licence: CC BY

Buss_etal_JIRS_Effects_Of_The_VoR
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Final published version, 1.51 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

@article{4771e43a76b3469f85266f74289c6ecf,

title = "Effects of the Human Presence among Robots in the ARIAC 2023 Industrial Automation Competition",

abstract = "ARIAC is a robotic simulation competition promoted by NIST annually since 2017, aiming to present competitors{\textquoteright} with contemporary industry problems to be solved using agile robotics. For the 2023 competition, ARIAC competitors must perform assembly and kitting tasks by controlling four autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), one floor-based robot, and one ceiling-based (Gantry) robot in an attempt to overcome a range of agility challenges in the supplied simulated environment, itself based on the Robot Operating System (ROS 2) and Gazebo. The 2023 competition also included a “human” agility challenge, comprising a (simulated) human operator working among robots on the factory floor. This development was motivated by the fact that, while robots and automation play an increasingly significant role in modern manufacturing, there still remains a close relationship between machines and humans. They should complement each other{\textquoteright}s strengths and cover each other{\textquoteright}s limitations while also observing any required safety rules. For example, the ISO standard “Robots and Robotic Devices – Collaborative robots” (ISO 15066:2016) prescribes the distances required between humans and robots. Within the ARIAC simulation environment, each human operator is controlled using autonomous Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents. At the same time, competitors can monitor the position of each human operator at any time by subscribing to the relevant ROS topic. In this article, we analyse the effects of this (simulated) human presence in the 2023 ARIAC competition and perform a detailed analysis of how the three different human personalities that were implemented affect the assembly tasks undertaken at the four different locations of the assembly stations. Given how the system is currently implemented, it appears that the influence of each encoded personality on the competitors is not as predictable as anticipated. We expand on why this may be a problem when addressing real collaborative spaces involving humans and industrial robots and the improvements that can be undertaken to mitigate the ensuing problems.",

keywords = "Human-robot collaboration, Intelligent systems, BDI agents, robot motion planning",

author = "\{Buss becker\}, Leandro and Anthony Downs and Craig Schlenoff and Justin Albrecht and Zeid Kootbally and Angelo Ferrando and Rafael Cardoso and Michael Fisher",

note = "Acknowledgements The authors thank all NIST employees and interns involved in running ARIAC 2023 and, most importantly, to the teams that took part in the competition.",

year = "2024",

month = jul,

day = "31",

doi = "10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6",

language = "English",

volume = "110",

journal = "Journal of Intelligent \& Robotic Systems",

issn = "1573-0409",

number = "112",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Effects of the Human Presence among Robots in the ARIAC 2023 Industrial Automation Competition

AU - Buss becker, Leandro

AU - Downs, Anthony

AU - Schlenoff, Craig

AU - Albrecht, Justin

AU - Kootbally, Zeid

AU - Ferrando, Angelo

AU - Cardoso, Rafael

AU - Fisher, Michael

N1 - Acknowledgements The authors thank all NIST employees and interns involved in running ARIAC 2023 and, most importantly, to the teams that took part in the competition.

PY - 2024/7/31

Y1 - 2024/7/31

N2 - ARIAC is a robotic simulation competition promoted by NIST annually since 2017, aiming to present competitors’ with contemporary industry problems to be solved using agile robotics. For the 2023 competition, ARIAC competitors must perform assembly and kitting tasks by controlling four autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), one floor-based robot, and one ceiling-based (Gantry) robot in an attempt to overcome a range of agility challenges in the supplied simulated environment, itself based on the Robot Operating System (ROS 2) and Gazebo. The 2023 competition also included a “human” agility challenge, comprising a (simulated) human operator working among robots on the factory floor. This development was motivated by the fact that, while robots and automation play an increasingly significant role in modern manufacturing, there still remains a close relationship between machines and humans. They should complement each other’s strengths and cover each other’s limitations while also observing any required safety rules. For example, the ISO standard “Robots and Robotic Devices – Collaborative robots” (ISO 15066:2016) prescribes the distances required between humans and robots. Within the ARIAC simulation environment, each human operator is controlled using autonomous Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents. At the same time, competitors can monitor the position of each human operator at any time by subscribing to the relevant ROS topic. In this article, we analyse the effects of this (simulated) human presence in the 2023 ARIAC competition and perform a detailed analysis of how the three different human personalities that were implemented affect the assembly tasks undertaken at the four different locations of the assembly stations. Given how the system is currently implemented, it appears that the influence of each encoded personality on the competitors is not as predictable as anticipated. We expand on why this may be a problem when addressing real collaborative spaces involving humans and industrial robots and the improvements that can be undertaken to mitigate the ensuing problems.

AB - ARIAC is a robotic simulation competition promoted by NIST annually since 2017, aiming to present competitors’ with contemporary industry problems to be solved using agile robotics. For the 2023 competition, ARIAC competitors must perform assembly and kitting tasks by controlling four autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), one floor-based robot, and one ceiling-based (Gantry) robot in an attempt to overcome a range of agility challenges in the supplied simulated environment, itself based on the Robot Operating System (ROS 2) and Gazebo. The 2023 competition also included a “human” agility challenge, comprising a (simulated) human operator working among robots on the factory floor. This development was motivated by the fact that, while robots and automation play an increasingly significant role in modern manufacturing, there still remains a close relationship between machines and humans. They should complement each other’s strengths and cover each other’s limitations while also observing any required safety rules. For example, the ISO standard “Robots and Robotic Devices – Collaborative robots” (ISO 15066:2016) prescribes the distances required between humans and robots. Within the ARIAC simulation environment, each human operator is controlled using autonomous Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agents. At the same time, competitors can monitor the position of each human operator at any time by subscribing to the relevant ROS topic. In this article, we analyse the effects of this (simulated) human presence in the 2023 ARIAC competition and perform a detailed analysis of how the three different human personalities that were implemented affect the assembly tasks undertaken at the four different locations of the assembly stations. Given how the system is currently implemented, it appears that the influence of each encoded personality on the competitors is not as predictable as anticipated. We expand on why this may be a problem when addressing real collaborative spaces involving humans and industrial robots and the improvements that can be undertaken to mitigate the ensuing problems.

KW - Human-robot collaboration

KW - Intelligent systems

KW - BDI agents

KW - robot motion planning

U2 - 10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6

DO - 10.1007/s10846-024-02148-6

M3 - Article

SN - 1573-0409

VL - 110

JO - Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems

JF - Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems

IS - 112

ER -