image: (a) System level overview. The pivotal hardware ingredient is a programmable metasurface which is controlled by a set of intelligent algorithms, ensuring a robust and stable wireless connection between the robotic brain and multiple robotic limbs. (b) Four selected snapshots of human-robot interaction results in indoor environment, where the I2MR see the human. There is a 60cm-thick concrete wall between the rooms and the corridor. (c) Analysis of the power consumption on the robot’s limb. view more
Credit: ©Science China Press
This study is led by Professor Lianlin Li (Peking University, China), Professor Tie Jun Cui (Southeast University, China) and Professor Philipp del Hougne (Rennes University, France). Intelligent robotics will become one of the core technologies in people daily lives of future smart societies. The team proposed the concept of intelligent indoor metasurface robotics, in which all sensing and computing are relegated to a centralized robotic brain endowed with the God’s eye, I2MR’s limbs (e.g. motorized vehicles and airborne drones) merely execute the wirelessly received instructions from the brain, and a secure wireless communication modality is utilized establish a preferential high-capacity wireless link between the I2MR’s brain and limbs.
“Despite the significant progress of intelligent robotics with different forms and characteristics in a wide range of applications, there are still challenges and opportunities to be addressed before the robots can see and understand a complex context to help humans in a future human-robot alliance. The challenges include but are not limited: 1) visual sensors embedded in robots have a limited field of view and can usually only operate in the line of sight, making them unsuitable for the acquisition of context awareness; 2) the visual sensors cannot operate in darkness and may be sensitive to skin colour; 3) by yielding human-interpretable data, the visual sensors tend to infringe humans’ privacy; 4) operating such sensors on the robotic edge can severely limit the cruise time of battery-powered mobile robots due to the power-hungry data acquisition and processing; and 5) the acceptable payload of mobile robots, especially airborne drones, is limited.” Li says.
The team sought to resolve above challenges by integrating the intelligent metasurface into robot. “The I2MR’s key is the centralized usage of an intelligent metasurface, which is capable of realizing low-latency and high-resolution three-dimensional imaging of humans, even beyond the line of sight (e.g. around corners and behind thick concrete walls), and thus I2MR is endowed with real-time and full-context awareness of its operating indoor environment. Thereby, the difficulties of sensing and computing arising in the conventional robotics could be fundamentally resolved.” Cui says.
The team implemented a proof-of-principle demonstration at around 2.4 GHz for the purpose of health-care assistance to a human inhabitant. In their implementation, the robot’s brain performs a complex sequence of sensing tasks to locate its mobile robotic limb as well as the human, and to recognize the human’s posture. The brain then implements a high-capacity communication link with the robotic limb and transmits the instructions. “The strategy could be extended to other frequencies and beyond for developing more intelligent robotics with more advanced functionalities” Li says.
The intelligent metasurfcace robot could open a new avenue for the conception of smart and wirelessly networked indoor robotics. The I2MR can be transposed to further important application areas of wirelessly networked robotic entities, such as the development of 6G wireless communications, green IoT, and digital twinning. “The intelligent metasurface robotic could be an emerging research direction involving various disciplines, and there are a lot of open questions to be carefully addressed in the future.” Li says.
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See the article:
Intelligent indoor metasurface robotics
https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac266
Journal
National Science Review