Using a BDI Agent to Represent a Human on the Factory Floor of the ARIAC 2023 Industrial Automation Competition

Leandro Buss Becker, Anthony Downs, Craig Schlenoff, Justin Albrecht, Zeid Kootbally, Angelo Ferrando, Rafael C. Cardoso, Michael Fisher

Abstract: The “Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition” (ARIAC) is an international robotic competition carried out in a simulated factory floor using ROS 2 (Robot Operating System)/Gazebo. Competitors control one gantry robot, four AGVs, and many other elements/devices, overcoming a range of agility challenges in this simulated environment, and are provided with a scoring system to evaluate their performance during the tasks. This paper describes one of the agility challenges in ARIAC 2023, which pertains to a simulated human operator on the factory floor. In undertaking manufacturing tasks, competitors must avoid close proximity between the gantry robot and the human not to get penalized. The human operator is implemented as a Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) agent in Jason. It is provided with a range of different potential types of behaviour in what concerns with how such human reacts when in proximity to the gantry robot. Three different personalities are presented, ranging from a minimally intrusive up to a very intrusive one. A preliminary analysis was conducted to evaluate the impact of using the developed Jason agent in the ARIAC 2023 competition.