Enabling Domain Experts to Model and Execute Tasks in Flexible Human-Robot Teams

Recent advances in safe human-robot coexistence make collaboration of humans and robots in achieving common goals feasible. We propose a concept that treats human and robot agents as equal partners in executing a task specified by a shared task model. Equality between agents offers high flexibility, as e.g. the team composition may change arbitrarily without interrupting the working progress. The main challenge in achieving flexible teaming is coordinating the robot with operations executed by human partners. We contribute an approach to this problem that is based on observing preand postconditions of operations using a robot-mounted camera system. The coordination mechanism is embedded into a framework that allows domain experts to create, test, and dispatch new task models to collaborative execution. The approach is validated by experimental tasks composed of pick-and-place operations.