Tiny robots team up like humans with 84% mission success, learn to ambush, encircle
HUMAC capitalizes on the uniquely human ability to grasp and anticipate others’ intentions.
Researchers from Duke University and Columbia University have successfully harnessed a uniquely human cognitive ability – the “Theory of Mind” – to rapidly train teams of robots to perform complex collaborative tasks.
“Humans start to develop the skill of Theory of Mind around age four,” explained Boyuan Chen, the Dickinson Family Assistant Professor at Duke University.
“It allows us to interpret and predict others’ intentions, allowing collaboration to emerge. This is an essential capability that our current robots are missing to allow them to work as a team with other robots and humans.”
The new framework, dubbed HUMAC (Human-guided Multi-Agent Collaboration), allows a single human coach to impart sophisticated teamwork skills to robots by intuitively guiding them through key strategic moments.
“We designed HUMAC to help robots learn from how humans think and coordinate in an efficient way,” added Chen.