Autonomy in Human Environments

As autonomous systems move out of the research laboratory into operational environments, they need ever deeper connections to their environments. Traditional notions of full autonomy - vehicles or robots working entirely on their own - are being augmented by precise, robust relationships with people and infrastructure. This situated autonomy appears in driverless cars» dependence on human-built infrastructure, the need for new systems of unmanned traffic management in the air, and the increasing importance of collaborative robotics in factories. This talk sketches a number of these emerging scenarios, introduces new technologies to address the problems they raise, and envisions a new approach to HRI that connects people, robots, and infrastructure at scale.