Study level

  • PhD

Faculty/School

Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Design Lab

Supervisors

Associate Professor Jared Donovan
Position
Associate Professor in Interaction Design
Division / Faculty
Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice
Professor Markus Rittenbruch
Position
Professor in Interaction Design
Division / Faculty
Faculty of CI, Education & Social Justice

External supervisors

  • Dr Pavan Sikka, CSIRO
  • Dr Cecile Paris, CSIRO
  • Dr Stephen Wan, CSIRO

Overview

Programming robots to carry out desired tasks is difficult and time-consuming. This PhD project focuses on collaborative and instructional dialogue agents to help human operators program robot tasks.

In this collaborative scenario, a human operator converses with an AI agent to explain the steps that are to be performed, using high-level references and abstractions that make sense to the human, as opposed to simple verbal instructions corresponding to rudimentary robot movements. The AI agent must interpret the high-level instructions and translate these into a robot program based on advanced AI path planning and goal planning capabilities. Importantly, the human operator’s perception of the shared environment may differ from that of the AI’s sensors, leading to scenarios where instructions may be ambiguous, and their disambiguation requires a collaborative dialogue.

The selected candidate will receive a scholarship of $36,161 per annum (indexed annually) with additional funding for travel and collaboration available.

Research activities

The PhD candidate will research and develop methods to situate a collaborative dialogue agent, focusing on the core research question of how to tackle ambiguities in instruction-to-code translation within a grounded robotics scenario. The PhD candidate will be expected to publish this research in relevant high-quality peer-reviewed journals and conferences.

Outcomes

The project will lead to the development of a system – tools, algorithms and data –  that allows a human operator to interactively program a robot using language. The research will lead to a better understanding of the design space in human-robot collaboration and will generate an effective example of collaborative intelligence based on both human and robot capabilities.

Skills and experience

This is a joint project between CSIRO Data61’s collaborative intelligence (CINTEL) Future Science Platform (FSP) and the Australian Cobotics Centre (ACC). CINTEL aims to develop the science that enables human intelligence and technology to work together across multiple domains, driving sustainable productivity growth and improving both the quantity and quality of jobs for human workers. The ACC is an ARC-funded Training Centre in Collaborative Robotics for Advanced Manufacturing and aims to increase the use of cobots in manufacturing, considering not just the technical advancements but the design and workforce implications that occur as a result of technical change.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

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Keywords

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information or submit an initial Expression of Interest via the Australian Cobotics Centre.