LCSR Seminar | Building Better Teammates: Concepts and Prototypes for Human-Robot Teaming

Description

David Handelman, a senior robotics researcher in the Research and Exploratory Development Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, will give a talk titled "Building Better Teammates: Concepts and Prototypes for Human-Robot Teaming" for the Laboratory for Computational Sensing + Robotics.

Abstract:

As robots take on more complex roles, the challenge is no longer just autonomy—it's teamwork. This talk presents research from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on building robots that collaborate with people as capable teammates rather than remote tools. First, we explore intuitive, semi-autonomous control of dexterous dual-arm robots, where inverse kinematics, whole-body coordination, mixed reality headsets, and brain-computer interfaces enable operators to "fly the grippers" of human-like manipulators to perform complex bimanual tasks with minimal training. Building on this foundation of intuitive control, a playbook approach to human-robot teaming is introduced as a framework for shared understanding—encoding hierarchical, role-based task plans that allow human and robotic teammates to "be on the same page" during coordinated operations. Recent work extends this playbook architecture with generative AI, enabling robots to plan and execute robust open-world tasks as a component of teaming. Operators can talk to quadruped robots in natural language over tactical radios for collaborative maneuver, shared situational awareness, and autonomous tasking. These capabilities are then extended to context-aware robot navigation for medic-robot teaming. Together, these efforts outline a path toward robots that understand intent, communicate transparently, and act with purpose alongside their human partners—a foundation for building better teammates in defense, disaster response, and beyond.