PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

UMass Amherst researchers create new method for orchestrating successful collaboration among robots

By exhibiting patience and waiting for teammates, collaborative robots complete tasks faster

2024-08-12
(Press-News.org) AMHERST, Mass. – New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that programming robots to create their own teams and voluntarily wait for their teammates results in faster task completion, with the potential to improve manufacturing, agriculture and warehouse automation. This research was recognized as a finalist for Best Paper Award on Multi-Robot Systems at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2024.

“There’s a long history of debate on whether we want to build a single, powerful humanoid robot that can do all the jobs, or we have a team of robots that can collaborate,” says one of the study authors, Hao Zhang, associate professor in the UMass Amherst Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences and director of the Human-Centered Robotics Lab.

In a manufacturing setting, a robot team can be less expensive because it maximizes the capability of each robot. The challenge then becomes: how do you coordinate a diverse set of robots? Some may be fixed in place, others mobile; some can lift heavy materials, while others are suited to smaller tasks.

As a solution, Zhang and his team created a learning-based approach for scheduling robots called learning for voluntary waiting and subteaming (LVWS).

“Robots have big tasks, just like humans,” says Zhang. “For example, they have a large box that cannot be carried by a single robot. The scenario will need multiple robots to collaboratively work on that.”

The other behavior is voluntary waiting. “We want the robot to be able to actively wait because, if they just choose a greedy solution to always perform smaller tasks that are immediately available, sometimes the bigger task will never be executed,” Zhang explains.

To test their LVWS approach, they gave six robots 18 tasks in a computer simulation and compared their LVWS approach to four other methods. In this computer model, there is a known, perfect solution for completing the scenario in the fastest amount of time. The researchers ran the different models through the simulation and calculated how much worse each method was compared to this perfect solution, a measure known as suboptimality.

The comparison methods ranged from 11.8% to 23% suboptimal. The new LVWS method was 0.8% suboptimal. “So the solution is close to the best possible or theoretical solution,” says Williard Jose, an author on the paper and a doctoral student in computer science at the Human-Centered Robotics Lab.

How does making a robot wait make the whole team faster? Consider this scenario: You have three robots—two that can lift four pounds each and one that can lift 10 pounds. One of the small robots is busy with a different task and there is a seven-pound box that needs to be moved.

“Instead of that big robot performing that task, it would be more beneficial for the small robot to wait for the other small robot and then they do that big task together because that bigger robot’s resource is better suited to do a different large task,” says Jose.

If it’s possible to determine an optimal answer in the first place, why do robots even need a scheduler? “The issue with using that exact solution is to compute that it takes a really long time,” explains Jose. “With larger numbers of robots and tasks, it’s exponential. You can’t get the optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time.”

When looking at models using 100 tasks, where it is intractable to calculate an exact solution, they found that their method completed the tasks in 22 timesteps compared to 23.05 to 25.85 timesteps for the comparison models.

Zhang hopes this work will help further the progress of these teams of automated robots, particularly when the question of scale comes into play. For instance, he says that a single, humanoid robot may be a better fit in the small footprint of a single-family home, while multi-robot systems are better options for a large industry environment that requires specialized tasks.

This research was funded by the DARPA Director’s Fellowship and a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Co-mentors announced in unique opportunity for PCCM fellows

2024-08-12
Glenview, Illinois – For the second year of the APCCMPD and CHEST Medical Educator Scholar Diversity Fellowship, Tristan Huie, MD, FCCP, and Anna Neumeier, MD, will be co-mentors for 2025. Designed to pair a fellow-in-training with an established medical educator, the unique scholarship was launched in August 2023 by the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) and the Association of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Program Directors (APCCMPD) to improve diversity in respiratory care. The program focuses on creating opportunities for fellows at institutions ...

AI poses no existential threat to humanity – new study finds

2024-08-12
ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) cannot learn independently or acquire new skills, meaning they pose no existential threat to humanity, according to new research from the University of Bath and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany. The study, published today as part of the proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) – the premier international conference in natural language processing – reveals that LLMs have a superficial ability to follow instructions and excel at proficiency in language, ...

Routine lab tests are not a reliable way to diagnose long COVID

2024-08-12
A National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported study has found that routine lab tests may not be useful in making a long COVID diagnosis for people who have symptoms of the condition. The study, part of NIH’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (NIH RECOVER) Initiative and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, highlights how challenging it can be to identify and diagnose a novel illness such as long COVID.   “Our challenge is to discover biomarkers that can help us quickly and accurately diagnose long ...

Tracking the color of light

Tracking the color of light
2024-08-12
Since the first demonstration of the laser in the 1960s, laser spectroscopy has become an essential tool for studying the detailed structures and dynamics of atoms and molecules. Advances in laser technology have further enhanced its capabilities. There are two main types of laser spectroscopy: frequency comb-based laser spectroscopy and tunable continuous-wave (CW) laser spectroscopy. Comb-based laser spectroscopy enables extremely precise frequency measurements, with an accuracy of up to 18 digits. This remarkable precision led to ...

Common mechanisms underpinning neurodevelopmental disorders and psychiatric diseases

2024-08-12
Recent large-scale epidemiologic studies have increasingly suggested that aberrant brain development and psychiatric disorders may share common mechanisms. The interplay between genetic variants and environmental stress has been shown to significantly impact genome integrity, reshaping brain development. This can result in changes to neural networks, which are linked to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders—areas where many questions remain unresolved. For more information, visit: bit.ly/4ddJSV0 For contributing article to this research topic, visit: bit.ly/4crNG41 Please use the Hot-Topic Code: BMS-CMP-2024-HT-33 ...

Department of Energy announces 2024 Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows and lecture series

Department of Energy announces 2024 Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows and lecture series
2024-08-12
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Four of the nation’s top scientists have each been awarded $1 million in direct funding via the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows program.   The program was established to develop, sustain, and promote scientific and academic excellence in Office of Science (SC) research through collaborations between universities and national laboratories.  The awards, authorized by the America COMPETES act, are bestowed on senior national laboratory scientists. The United States has ...

Mary Bishai named Distinguished Scientist Fellow

Mary Bishai named Distinguished Scientist Fellow
2024-08-12
UPTON, N.Y. — Physicist Mary Bishai of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has been named a 2024 DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellow. The honor recognizes her “enduring contributions at the intensity frontier of high energy physics in unraveling fundamental properties of neutrinos, extraordinary leadership and service to the particle physics community, and deep commitment to broadening participation through mentoring next generation scientists.” As described in a DOE Office of Science press release issued today, the ...

Can meditation and stretching relieve cramping caused by cirrhosis?

2024-08-12
People suffering from cirrhosis may find some symptom relief from two accessible activities: stretching and meditation.   A study from the University of Michigan compared the two therapies as a means to relieve nocturnal muscle cramps and found both effective.  The resulting paper, “The RELAX randomized controlled trial: Stretching versus meditation for nocturnal muscle cramps,” appeared in Liver International.  The study Two out of every three people with cirrhosis experience muscle cramps at night that wake them from sleep.  Since ...

Study reveals oleoyl-ACP-hydrolase underpins lethal respiratory viral disease

Study reveals oleoyl-ACP-hydrolase underpins lethal respiratory viral disease
2024-08-12
Respiratory infections can be severe, even deadly, in some individuals, but not in others. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and other collaborators have gained new understanding of why this is the case by uncovering an early molecular driver that underpins fatal disease. Oleoyl-ACP-hydrolase (OLAH) is an enzyme involved in fatty acid metabolism. A study, published today in Cell, shows that OLAH drives severe disease outcomes.   The important role of OLAH in immune response has gone unrecognized for several reasons, including a lack of noticeable expression in healthy ...

Advances in drug delivery carrier microwave-assisted reactions for enhanced therapeutics and diagnostic purposes

2024-08-12
Microwave irradiation technology is emerging as a powerful tool in the fields of organic synthesis, pharmaceuticals, and nanocarrier development. Recently, microwave-assisted reactions have gained significant attention for their effectiveness in synthesizing drug delivery carriers. This technology offers notable advantages, including high yield, shorter reaction times, and improved compound purity, making it a promising approach for developing nanoparticles with enhanced physicochemical properties and bioavailability. For more information, please visit: bit.ly/3SFk4cf For contributing article in this research topic, visit: bit.ly/3WXyoza Use ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

UMass Amherst Nursing Professor Emerita honored as ‘Living Legend’

New guidelines aim to improve cystic fibrosis screening

Picky eaters by day, buffet by night: Butterfly, moth diets sync to plant aromas

Pennington Biomedical’s Dr. Leanne Redman honored with the E. V. McCollum Award from the American Society for Nutrition

CCNY physicists uncover electronic interactions mediated via spin waves

Researchers’ 3D-printing formula may transform future of foam

Nurture more important than nature for robotic hand

Drug-delivering aptamers target leukemia stem cells for one-two knockout punch

New study finds that over 95% of sponsored influencer posts on Twitter were not disclosed

New sea grant report helps great lakes fish farmers navigate aquaculture regulations

Strain “trick” improves perovskite solar cells’ efficiency

How GPS helps older drivers stay on the roads

Estrogen and progesterone stimulate the body to make opioids

Dancing with the cells – how acoustically levitating a diamond led to a breakthrough in biotech automation

Machine learning helps construct an evolutionary timeline of bacteria

Cellular regulator of mRNA vaccine revealed... offering new therapeutic options

Animal behavioral diversity at risk in the face of declining biodiversity

Finding their way: GPS ignites independence in older adult drivers

Antibiotic resistance among key bacterial species plateaus over time

‘Some insects are declining but what’s happening to the other 99%?’

Powerful new software platform could reshape biomedical research by making data analysis more accessible

Revealing capillaries and cells in living organs with ultrasound

American College of Physicians awards $260,000 in grants to address equity challenges in obesity care

Researchers from MARE ULisboa discover that the European catfish, an invasive species in Portugal, has a prolonged breeding season, enhancing its invasive potential

Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, FAACR, honored with the 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research

Solar cells made of moon dust could power future space exploration

Deporting immigrants may further shrink the health care workforce

Border region emergency medical services in migrant emergency care

Resident physician intentions regarding unionization

Healthy nutrition and physical lifestyle choices lower cancer mortality risk for survivors, new ACS study finds

[Press-News.org] UMass Amherst researchers create new method for orchestrating successful collaboration among robots
By exhibiting patience and waiting for teammates, collaborative robots complete tasks faster