Intelligent planning and control for telerobotic operations

One of the important issues in telerobotic systems is to develop an efficient method to combine human and machine intelligence so that the telerobotic system can perform tasks which cannot be done by either a human or autonomous planner/controller alone. A new intelligent fusion scheme for human operator command and autonomous planner/controller in a telerobotic system has been developed based on the event-based planning and nonlinear control theory. It provides a unified model to integrate a human operator control command with action planning and control of autonomous operation. As a result, the telerobotic system can perform tasks which cannot be done by either a human operator or an autonomous planner/controller alone. This scheme lays down a foundation for planning and control of a general robotic system involving human operators, and provides a natural and efficient way to fuse the human intelligence with machine intelligence. The scheme is implemented and tested on a PUMA 560 dual-arm system. The experimental results of obstacle avoidance, hybrid force/position control with a commanded force as well as dual-arm coordinated teleoperation are presented