Affordance-based control of a variable-autonomy telerobot

Most robot platforms operate in one of two modes: full autonomy, usually in the lab; or low-level teleoperation, usually in the field. Full autonomy is currently realizable only in narrow domains of robotics-like mapping an environment. Tedious teleoperation/joystick control is typical in military applications, like complex manipulation and navigation with bomb-disposal robots. This thesis describes a robot "surrogate" with an intermediate and variable level of autonomy. The robot surrogate accomplishes manipulation tasks by taking guidance and planning suggestions from a human "supervisor." The surrogate does not engage in high-level reasoning, but only in intermediate-level planning and low-level control. The human supervisor supplies the high-level reasoning and some intermediate control-leaving execution details for the surrogate. The supervisor supplies world knowledge and planning suggestions by "drawing" on a 3D view of the world constructed from sensor data. The surrogate conveys its own model of the world to the supervisor, to enable mental-model sharing between supervisor and surrogate. The contributions of this thesis include: (1) A novel partitioning of the manipulation task load between supervisor and surrogate, which side-steps problems in autonomous robotics by replacing them with problems in interfaces, perception, planning, control, and human-robot trust; and (2) The algorithms and software designed and built for mental model-sharing and supervisor-assisted manipulation. Using this system, we are able to command the PR2 to manipulate simple objects incorporating either a single revolute or prismatic joint.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Fleder, Michael (Michael S.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Seth Teller.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85221

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/85221