Frontiers in Autonomous Systems Technology (FAST)

The university has set up a pioneering research project together with five industrial partners, which goes under the name FAST (new Frontiers in Autonomous Systems Technology). FAST aims to develop mobile robots with increased flexibility that enables them to operate in changing environments. Four PhD students have been appointed in this multi-disciplinary project, one of whom will work on human-robot interaction at the Human-Technology Interaction group (department IE&IS). This research direction focuses on socially aware navigation, intention recognition and social intelligence.

The next generation robots need to operate in environments with people. However, current robots are unable to take social rules and human behavior into account. Therefore a framework is developed that allows robots to respect social distances, incorporate social rules, and make sense of human activities. Additionally, a robot needs to be able to proactively choose its trajectory and communicate its intentions in such a way that people will understand whether the robot is planning to interact with them or just plans to pass them by. It is expected that understanding human intentions and communicating a robot’s own intentions are necessary requirements for fluent and efficient human-robot interaction.

FAST aims to develop mobile robots with increased flexibility that enables them to operate in changing environments with people