Variably-autonomous manipulation

There are numerous applications in which robots are needed to assist rather than replace human operators. These applications typically involve either work in a dangerous environment or performing tasks that are physically impossible for humans to accomplish by themselves. Robots used in this mode do not need to be autonomous because they can essentially be controlled by the operator. Nonetheless, it is difficult for an operator to flawlessly control a robot with a large number of degrees of freedom. Therefore, an intelligent control system is needed to correct and improve the operator´s input to the robot. In this paper the authors discuss a central component in this control system known as the variably-autonomous trajectory generator (VATG). The VATG combines input from the operator with input from one or more autonomous control modules (CM) to generate the robot trajectory. The amount of impact the autonomous CMs will have on the overall trajectory will depend on a number of factors such as the task being performed and the sensing modalities available, hence the authors refer to this type of control as being variably-autonomous