Most existing AI systems for collaborative robots are piecemeal and task-specific. We need to evolve, integrate, and further study Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) algorithms. More crucially, HRC research has not been adequately applied in full systems and across task domains. The time is ripe for a “Collaborative Robotics Grand Challenge”, unifying the efforts of HRC research, with home, office, healthcare, and educational sub-challenges. We will implement existing and new algorithms, models, and systems and evaluate them on robots in new collaborative tasks, including handovers, joint construction, and delivery, with an eye toward real-world applications.
