The INSIDE initiative explores symbiotic interactions between humans and robots in joint cooperative activities, and addresses the following key research problems:
– How can robots plan their course of action to coordinate with and accommodate for the actions of their human teammates? In particular, is it possible to foresee, at planning time, the possibility of having the robots assist humans in actions that the latter cannot perform single-handedly (due to the complexity of the action or to limitations of the human agent) as well as having the humans assist the robots in those actions that the robots cannot perform on their own (for example, due to perceptual or actuation limitations)?
– How can task, context and environment information collected from a set of networked sensors (such as cameras and biometric sensors) be exploited to create more natural and engaging interactions between humans and robots involved in a joint cooperative activity in a physical environment?

INSIDE strives to develop new hardware and software solutions that will support the aforementioned research towards the final deployment of a real-world interaction scenario where children with impaired development interact with a networked robot system in a joint cooperative task with therapeutical purposes. The proposed initiative involves the collaborative effort of the Computer Science Department at CMU and several Portuguese institutions (three research institutions and one hospital), as well as three Portuguese companies with extensive experience in the development of robot systems, human-computer speech interaction and compact biometric sensors.