Enhanced teleoperation for D&D

Remote systems are essential for reducing risk to human workers from hazardous radiation and difficult work environments, while improving productivity and reducing costs. The major drawback of currently available remote manipulator systems is that teleoperation is slow and imprecise. The presented work focuses on enhancing remote operation of tools for D&D tasks by introducing teleautonomy and telecollaboration. In teleautonomy, the robot performs a given task autonomously, while the human operator intervenes in the process as a supervisor. In telecollaboration, the human operator is passively constrained by a virtual fixture, but is responsible for the motion. This work, sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP), builds on a reactive, agent-based control architecture and robot control technology.