Irfan Ahmad Ganie - Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Wilkes University

Robots are no longer machines that simply follow commands. They are becoming teammates for humans, capable of working and learning alongside people safely and cooperatively, even without full knowledge of the environment or surrounding teammates. In this work, we develop learning-based controllers that allow robots to make real-time decisions using reinforcement learning, inspired by how the human brain adapts. These controllers enable robots to coordinate their actions with other teammates without requiring complete information about the task or the environment. Most importantly, the controllers are designed to always prioritize human safety, ensuring that the robots make decisions that support safe, collaborative, and intelligent teamwork in uncertain and dynamic settings. The proposed approach has broad applications in fields such as collaborative robotics, autonomous systems, smart manufacturing, healthcare assistance, and search & rescue missions. Simulations show this approach significantly improves performance compared to standard methods.