Collaborating with Humanoid Robots in Space

One of the great challenges of putting humanoid robots into space is developing cognitive capabilities for the robots with an interface that allows human astronauts to collaborate with the robots as naturally and efficiently as they would with other astronauts. In this joint effort with NASA and the entire Robonaut team, we are integrating natural language and gesture understanding, spatial reasoning incorporating such features as human–robot perspective taking, and cognitive model-based understanding to achieve a high level of human–robot interaction. Building greater autonomy into the robot frees the human operator(s) from focusing strictly on the demands of operating the robot, and instead allows the possibility of actively collaborating with the robot to focus on the task at hand. By using shared representations between the human and robot, and enabling the robot to assume the perspectives of the human, the humanoid robot may become a more effective collaborator with a human astronaut for achieving mission objectives in space.