NIFTi

The Robotics project, NIFTi, is all about human-robot cooperation. It’s about how robots and humans can team up, interact together, and work together to achieve shared goals.

The project focuses on Urban Search and Rescue tasks, in particular. The idea is to have humans and robots work together for exploring the place of disaster, assessing the overall situation and locating victims. The ultimate goal is minimizing work load for humans while optimizing workflow.

A majority of the robot’s models as well as the decision processes are based on the real "human factor". In other words, this project aims at making robots capable of estimating how humans act  in dynamic environments. As a result, robots will be able to try to do what humans do and decide what to say next while talking with humans.

Moreover, the project aims to evaluate systems with USAR end user authorities, every year. The main idea is to have rescue personal work with the robots for carrying out real-life missions.

NIFTi is an important Project in the Cognitive Systems and Robotics unit. The EU FP7 ICT Programme funds this project that has been running since January 1st 2010 and will end by December 31st 2013. 

While DFKI GmbH coordinates NIFTi, main scientific partners behind the project are TNO Human Factors, ETH Zürich, Fraunhofer IAIS, Czech Technical and Rome’s “La Sapienza” University, and BlueBotics.