“Seamless Autonomy”: Removing autonomy level stratifications

The dispatching of robots into mission critical environments is becoming more and more commonplace as hardware evolves to a level of ruggedness demanded in these scenarios. Despite the advances in hardware platforms, novel control strategies to support effective human-robot interaction languish behind. Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and Washington University in St. Louis have been working to bridge the gap between current robotic hardware readiness and its lack of efficient system usability. In 2007 the INL successfully deployed commercial off the shelf (COTS) robots targeted to Military and Hazmat Team usage outfitted with an intelligence payload in a series of chemical, biological, radiologic, nuclear, explosive (CBRNE) detection exercises using domain area experts from the US Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal Command and the US Armys Chemical School at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. This paper examines the primitive behaviors that comprise the intelligent navigation payload used in the exercises. It also discusses Seamless Autonomy, a robot control strategy that blends the users knowledge of the task requirement with the robotpsilas interpretation of the local environment, providing a more appropriate task allocation between human and robot. Seamless autonomy simplifies the userpsilas interaction with the system by removing the need for the user to understand the individual behaviors or when they should be used. Instead the user is enabled to think in terms of the task goals.