Supermedia enhanced human/machine cooperative control of robot formations

This paper presents theoretical and experimental results on supermedia enhanced human/machine cooperative control of robot formations. Supermedia is the collection of all feedback streams rendered for the operator; such as video, haptic, temperature and others. The core idea is to utilize machine intelligence for the control of a robot formation. However, once this intelligence is insufficient to cope with unexpected events, human intervention is an option. To accomplish this, without the need for replanning, perceptive planning and control theory is utilized. This would allow the cooperation of human and machine for the control of the robot formation. To increase the flexibility and efficiency of such systems, commands of different levels of complexity can be issued. This gives rise to a hierarchical command structure, which can be described by a hierarchical perceptive frame that is modeled using automata and languages.