Intel Research's Personal Robotics project aims to develop useful robotic assistants for indoor, populated environments. To transition robots from structured, assembly line scenarios to more natural, unstructured environments requires advances in perception, reasoning under uncertainty, and human-robot interaction. We are currently pursuing research in all these areas.
The project is spread across our Pittsburgh and Seattle labs. The Pittsburgh team collaborates closely with the Quality of Life Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University; the Seattle team collaborates with the University of Washington. Both teams have identical hardware. Currently, Pittsburgh focuses on mid-range perception, motion planning, and manipulation research, while Seattle focuses on short-range sensing and perception, and human-robot interaction. These efforts are being combined to provide an extremely competent mobile manipulation platform: Herb, the Home Exploring Robotic Butler.
For more details on Personal Robotics, please contact Siddhartha Srinivasa or Josh Smith (email: {siddhartha.srinivasa/joshua.r.smith}@intel.com)