Human-robot collaboration (HRC) in a shared workspace has become a common pattern in real-world robot applications and has garnered significant research interest. However, most existing studies for human-in-the-loop (HITL)  collaboration with robots in a shared workspace are evaluated in either simplified game environments or physical platforms,  which fall short in limited realistic significance or limited scalability, respectively. To support future studies, we build an embodied framework named HumanTHOR, which enables humans to act in the simulation environment through VR  devices to support HITL collaborations in a shared workspace. To validate our system, we build a benchmark of everyday tasks and conduct a preliminary user study with two baseline algorithms. The results show that the robot can successfully assist humans in collaboration, which substantiates the significance of HRC. The comparison between different levels of baselines affirms that our system can adequately evaluate the capability of robots and serve as a benchmark for the calibration of robot algorithms while indicating the existing space for future study. In summary, our system provides a preliminary foundation for future research on HRC in the shared workspace.

Our video showcases the following: 

• The Overall System Architecture

• Tour in Various Scenes

• Operating Instructions

• A Representative Case Demonstrating HRC in Our System

We present an example of loosely coupled HRC in a shared workspace, where the human wants to pick an apple and put it into the fridge. Compared to the sole human scenario, collaborating with a robot can significantly improve efficiency. Motivated by the ubiquitous requirement of studying HRC, we developed the HumanTHOR system to support future HRC studies.

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