An Algorithmic Planner Helps Delegate Tasks to Human-Robot Teams

As robots increasingly join people on the factory floor, in warehouses and elsewhere on the job, dividing up who will do which tasks grows in complexity and importance. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute have developed an algorithmic planner that helps delegate tasks to humans and robots. The planner, “Act, Delegate or Learn” (ADL), considers a list of tasks and decides how best to assign them. The researchers asked three questions: When should a robot act to complete a task? When should a task be delegated to a human? And when should a robot learn a new task?