Supervisory control of a humanoid robot in microgravity for manipulation tasks

Abstract

Teleoperation is the dominant form of dexterous robotic tasks in the field. However, there are many use cases in which direct teleoperation is not feasible such as disaster areas with poor communication as posed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge or robot operations on spacecraft far from Earth. Presented is a solution that combines the Affordance Template Framework for object interaction with TaskForce for supervisory control in order to accomplish high-level task objectives with basic autonomous behavior from the robot. This framework has allowed the robot to take corrective actions before requesting assistance from the user. This work is demonstrated with Robonaut 2 removing a Cargo Transfer Bag from a simulated logistics resupply vehicle for spaceflight using a single operator command. This was executed with 80% success with no human involvement and 95% success with limited human interaction. This technology sets the stage to do any number of high-level tasks using a similar framework, allowing the robot to accomplish tasks with minimal to no human interaction.