System and method for flexible human-machine collaboration

A system for enabling generalizable user-robot collaboration, comprising:

• a non-transitory memory storing instructions;
• and
• a processor executing the instructions to cause the system to perform a method comprising:
• providing a composition of a robot capability and one or more user interaction capabilities, wherein the robot capability models at least one functionality of a robot for performing a type of task action;
• specializing the robot capability with an information kernel to provide a specialized robot capability, wherein the information kernel encapsulates a set of task-related parameters associated with the type of task action;
• providing an instance of the specialized robot capability as a robot capability element that controls the at least one functionality of the robot based on the set of task-related parameters;
• providing one or more instances of the one or more user interaction capabilities as one or more interaction capability elements;
• executing the robot capability element to receive user input via the one or more user interaction capability elements;
• and
• controlling, based on the user input and the set of task-related parameters, the at least one functionality of the robot to perform at least one task action of the type of task action in collaboration with the user input.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions which, when executed on a processor, perform a method comprising:

• providing a composition of a robot capability and one or more user interaction capabilities, wherein the robot capability models at least one functionality of a robot for performing a type of task action;
• specializing the robot capability with an information kernel to provide a specialized robot capability, wherein the information kernel encapsulates a set of task-related parameters associated with the type of task action;
• providing an instance of the specialized robot capability as a robot capability element that controls the at least one functionality of the robot based on the set of task-related parameters;
• providing one or more instances of the one or more user interaction capabilities as one or more interaction capability elements;
• executing the robot capability element to receive user input via the one or more user interaction capability elements;
• and
• controlling, based on the user input and the set of task-related parameters, the at least one functionality of the robot to perform at least one task action of the type of task action in collaboration with the user input.