TR2025-067

Human Monitoring with Correlation-based Dynamic Time Warping for Collaborative Assembly

    •  De Lazzari, D., Terreran, M., Giacomuzzo, G., Jain, S., Falco, P., Carli, R., Romeres, D., "Human Monitoring with Correlation-based Dynamic Time Warping for Collaborative Assembly", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) - Workshop on The Future of Intelligent Manufacturing: From innovation to implementation, May 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-067 PDF Video
      • @inproceedings{DeLazzari2025may2,
      • author = {De Lazzari, Davide and Terreran, Matteo and Giacomuzzo, Giulio and Jain, Siddarth and Falco, Pietro and Carli, Ruggero and Romeres, Diego},
      • title = {{Human Monitoring with Correlation-based Dynamic Time Warping for Collaborative Assembly}},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) - Workshop on The Future of Intelligent Manufacturing: From innovation to implementation},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = may,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-067}
      • }
  • MERL Contacts:
  • Research Area:

    Robotics

Abstract:

This paper introduces the Proactive Assistance through action-Completion Estimation (PACE) framework, designed to enhance human-robot collaboration through real- time monitoring of human progress. Central to PACE is OS- DTWWP, a novel open-ended Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm for real-time human action completion estimation, which incorporates a Windowed-Pearson (WP) correlation- based distance metric to dynamically track task progression from hand movements. PACE trains a reinforcement learning policy from limited demonstrations to generate a proactive assistance policy that synchronizes robotic actions with human activities, minimizing idle time and enhancing collaboration efficiency. We validate the framework through user studies involving 12 participants, showing significant improvements in interaction fluency, reduced waiting times, and positive user feedback compared to traditional methods.

 

  • Related News & Events

    •  NEWS    MERL contributes to ICRA 2025
      Date: May 19, 2025 - May 23, 2025
      Where: IEEE ICRA
      MERL Contacts: Stefano Di Cairano; Jianlin Guo; Chiori Hori; Siddarth Jain; Devesh K. Jha; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Philip V. Orlik; Arvind Raghunathan; Diego Romeres; Yuki Shirai; Abraham P. Vinod; Yebin Wang
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Optimization, Robotics, Human-Computer Interaction
      Brief
      • MERL made significant contributions to both the organization and the technical program of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025, which was held in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, from May 19th to May 23rd.

        MERL was a Bronze sponsor of the conference, and MERL researchers chaired four sessions in the areas of Manipulation Planning, Human-Robot Collaboration, Diffusion Policy, and Learning for Robot Control.

        MERL researchers presented four papers in the main conference on the topics of contact-implicit trajectory optimization, proactive robotic assistance in human-robot collaboration, diffusion policy with human preferences, and dynamic and model learning of robotic manipulators. In addition, five more papers were presented in the workshops: “Structured Learning for Efficient, Reliable, and Transparent Robots,” “Safely Leveraging Vision-Language Foundation Models in Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities,” “Long-term Human Motion Prediction,” and “The Future of Intelligent Manufacturing: From Innovation to Implementation.”

        MERL researcher Diego Romeres delivered an invited talk titled “Dexterous Robotics: From Multimodal Sensing to Real-World Physical Interactions.”

        MERL also collaborated with the University of Padua on one of the conference’s challenges: the “3rd AI Olympics with RealAIGym” (https://ai-olympics.dfki-bremen.de).

        During the conference, MERL researchers received the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering Best New Application Paper Award for their paper titled “Smart Actuation for End-Edge Industrial Control Systems.”

        About ICRA

        The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) is the flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the world’s largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on research advances and the latest technological developments in robotics. The event attracts over 7,000 participants, 143 partners and exhibitors, and receives more than 4,000 paper submissions.
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  • Related Video

  • Related Publication

  •  De Lazzari, D., Terreran, M., Giacomuzzo, G., Jain, S., Falco, P., Carli, R., Romeres, D., "PACE: Proactive Assistance in Human-Robot Collaboration through Action-Completion Estimation", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2025.
    BibTeX TR2025-064 PDF Video
    • @inproceedings{DeLazzari2025may,
    • author = {De Lazzari, Davide and Terreran, Matteo and Giacomuzzo, Giulio and Jain, Siddarth and Falco, Pietro and Carli, Ruggero and Romeres, Diego},
    • title = {{PACE: Proactive Assistance in Human-Robot Collaboration through Action-Completion Estimation}},
    • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
    • year = 2025,
    • month = may,
    • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-064}
    • }