image: A multidisciplinary NYU WIRELESS team including Ludovic Righetti (pictured), associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and mechanical and aerospace engineering, will develop ways for robots such as this to use 5G wireless to communicate with cloud-based AI. view more
Credit: NYU Tandon
BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - A research team at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, with the support of the National Science Foundation's National Robotics Initiative 2.0, is building the foundations of a wireless system that takes advantage of superfast fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications to outsource a mobile robots' artificial intelligence (AI) functions to the edge cloud -- the server in the cloud closest to the robot.
The collaborators, all of whom are members of the faculty of NYU Tandon's renowned NYU WIRELESS center for telecommunications research, will design manipulation and locomotion algorithms that address some important technical hurdles to making 5G networks a viable bridge between robot and server.
Shifting AI capabilities from the robot to a remote server offers tantalizing operational benefits, such as allowing robots to perceive the environment, perform complex operations, and make decisions autonomously, all without incurring major energy and weight costs from onboard computational and power-generation equipment.
Comprising Ludovic Righetti, professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; and Siddharth Garg, Sundeep Rangan and Elza Erkip, professors in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the team will focus on solving issues of reliability, safety of robotic operation under communication degradation, and scalability to multi-robot systems.
The collaboration brings expertise in robotics (Righetti), computer architecture and computation (Garg), wireless networks (Rangan and Erkip), and information theory (Erkip). Righetti, a new hire at Tandon, will lead the project.
"The goal is to design algorithms that optimally distribute computation between robots and the cloud for guaranteed safe robotic operation," said Erkip.
Rangan explained that while cloud robotics has long been seen as a way to offload power-consuming computation, it has remained elusive for real-time perception and control because of limited bandwidth and high latency of wireless communication systems. He explained that the problem is exacerbated by the need to support the bandwidth-hungry video and LIDAR systems commonly used on robots today.
"5G systems offer the potential for vastly higher data rates, but real-time cloud robotics remains challenging," he said. "A particular difficulty is that 5G communication using the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands are highly susceptible to blockage. As a result, links can have high peak data rates, but may be only intermittently available."
The project considers various aspects of these challenges, including 5G channel modeling in robotics scenarios, dynamic partitioning of tasks between the cloud and robot, and the development of new control algorithms that can exploit high rate links when available -- but that also operate when links are blocked.
"The ultimate goal is to help the development of light-weight, autonomous, cloud-connected robotics," said Righetti, adding that outreach activities -- including offering the team's algorithms for free -- will be a major aspect of demonstrating the unique capabilities of 5G-enabled robotic systems. "We are lowering the barriers of entry for scientists and industries seeking to exploit 5G-enabled robotics by distributing the algorithms we develop through open-source and to industrial partners via NYU WIRELESS."
He explained that the work will include curriculum development based on the research. "This initiative will contribute to the education of undergraduate and graduate students; in fact, we are offering supervised projects with the possibility of working directly on state-of-the-art experimental platforms."
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The initiative, along with another NSF-supported NYU Tandon robotics project that seeks to allow mobile 3D printers to work in autonomous teams at remote locations, reflects NYU Tandon's focus on vital research areas and the intersections between them in fields like AI, cybersecurity, communications and information technology, data science, and robotics.
About the New York University Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, the founding date for both the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture and the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly). A January 2014 merger created a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within NYU, one of the country's foremost private research universities, and is closely connected to engineering programs at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates Future Labs focused on start-up businesses in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit http://engineering.nyu.edu.