Towards Vertical and Horizontal Extension of Shared Control Concept

Goals of shared control usually focus on the sharing of the action. Several examples such as shared control in robotics, in car driving, in wheelchair control highlight the interest for Human operator to be able to take part in the control of a process in the same way as assistance systems. Moreover, with the haptic shared control, Human operator can feel what could be or what is the current action of the assistance system. But if shared control is so useful today in some domains and will also be very interesting for other domains, it is because action is not the only function that Human operator can share with an assistance system. In fact, we would even like to suppose that the more Human operator and assistance systems share problem solving process functions, the more their cooperation would be safe, efficient, and comfortable. The objective of this paper is to propose an extension of the use of Shared control concept by giving other opportunities for Human operator and assistance system to share activity. The horizontal extension relates the integration of all the functions, from information gathering to action implementation. The vertical extension relates the integration of the levels of activity usually represented by the strategic, tactical and operational levels. Human machine cooperation principles are used to attempt such an objective.