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TRESTLE: Autonomous Assembly by Teams of Coordinated Robots
Head: Sanjiv Singh
Contact: Sanjiv Singh (ssingh@ri.cmu.edu)

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Associated centers: VASC, MRTC, SRI, and FRC
Associated lab/group: Human-Robot Interaction Group

For more information, see this project's homepage.

This page last updated - January 1999.

Project Description

Autonomous assembly of large structures will require teams of robots. Much like any human work crew, heterogeneous capabilities will also be necessary. The TRESTLE project is developing the architectural framework necessary to coordinate robots performing complex assembly projects. In specific, the project seeks to develop architectural tools used to coordinate actions performed by multiple robots. These tools form the core of an executive layer that orchestrates and monitors tasks across robots to perform assembly tasks. Since the number of possible failure modes over many robots working on long sequences of actions is high, TRESTLE incorporates the ability of humans to cooperatively manage tasks. By employing Sliding Autonomy, we allow the operator to manage the assembly in three different ways. First, a portion of the system's tasks can be predefined to be under operator control. Second, the operator can intervene and manually switch the system to operator control. Third, the system can automatically shift to operator control after a failure.

TRESTLE will examine tasks such as:

• Truss Assembly: Truss assembly includes retrieving materials from stockpiles, moving materials to the worksite, coordinating assembly with other agents, and mating compliant structures without causing collisions between agents and the infrastructure.
• Bracing: Cable bracing under tension can often add strength and rigidity to truss structures. Bracing along the diagonals of a cube, for example, can greatly increase its strength with minimal increase in weight.
• Wiring: Many structures need to be wired after assembly. Though wiring need not be tensioned, as in the case of bracing, but may have complex connectors or irregular waypoints.

Personnel [Past Members]

	Name	Title	Email Address
	Bradley Hamner	Research Programmer	bhamner@andrew.cmu.edu
	Frederik Heger	PhD Student, RI	fwh@andrew.cmu.edu
	Brennan Peter Sellner	PhD Student, RI	bsellner@andrew.cmu.edu
	Reid Simmons	Research Prof/Assoc Dir Educ/PhD Chair	reids@cs.cmu.edu
	Sanjiv Singh	Associate Research Professor	ssingh@ri.cmu.edu
	David Wettergreen	Assoc. Research Professor	dsw@ri.cmu.edu
	William Red L. Whittaker	University Professor	red@ri.cmu.edu

Publications

Note: This list may not be comprehensive. It contains only those publications in the RI publications database. Entries are listed in reverse chronological order.

• Human-Robot Teams for Large-Scale Assembly
  R. Simmons, S. Singh, F. Heger, L.M. Hiatt, S.C. Koterba, N. Melchior, and B.P. Sellner
  Proceedings of the NASA Science Technology Conference 2007 (NSTC-07), May, 2007. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [411 KB] copyrighted

• Towards Proactive Replanning for Multi-Robot Teams
  B.P. Sellner and R. Simmons
  Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Planning and Scheduling in Space 2006, October, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [450 KB], ps.gz [566 KB] copyrighted

• Sliding Autonomy for Complex Coordinated Multi-Robot Tasks: Analysis & Experiments
  F. Heger and S. Singh
  In Proceedings, Robotics: Systems and Science, August, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1208 KB] copyrighted

• Coordinated Multi-Agent Teams and Sliding Autonomy for Large-Scale Assembly
  B.P. Sellner, F. Heger, L. Hiatt, R. Simmons, and S. Singh
  Proceedings of the IEEE - Special Issue on Multi-Robot Systems, Vol. 94, No. 7, July, 2006, pp. 1425 - 1444. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1022 KB] copyrighted

• Attaining Situational Awareness for Sliding Autonomy
  B.P. Sellner, L.M. Hiatt, R. Simmons, and S. Singh
  Proceedings of HRI 2006, March, 2006. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [522 KB] copyrighted

• Results in Sliding Autonomy for Multi-robot Spatial Assembly
  F. Heger, L. Hiatt, B.P. Sellner, R. Simmons, and S. Singh
  Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, September, 2005. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [1724 KB] copyrighted

• User Modelling for Principled Sliding Autonomy in Human-Robot Teams
  B.P. Sellner, R. Simmons, and S. Singh
  Proceedings of the NRL Multirobot Workshop 2005, 2005. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [764 KB] copyrighted

• Enhancing Multi-Robot Coordinated Teams with Sliding Autonomy
  J. Brookshire
  master's thesis, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-04-40, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, May, 2004.
  Download: pdf [1073 KB] copyrighted

• Preliminary Results in Sliding Autonomy for Coordinated Teams
  J. Brookshire, S. Singh, and R. Simmons
  Proceedings of The 2004 Spring Symposium Series, March, 2004. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [414 KB] copyrighted

• Preliminary Results in Sliding Autonomy for Assembly by Coordinated Teams
  J. Brookshire, S. Singh, and R. Simmons
  2004. [Abstract]
  Download: pdf [409 KB] copyrighted