An Implementation of Seamless Human-Robot Interaction for Telerobotics

Achieving human-robot cooperation in a telerobotics system is the focus of this paper. The implementation of human-robot systems can be extremely challenging when the robot is not directly controlled by the human. The interaction mode, depending on the task context, can be continuous manual, semi-autonomous or autonomous. To address the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) issues in such a system, a concept of seamless HRI is introduced. Seamless HRI implies flexibility in human control in interacting with a robot in different situations, and the adaptability of the robot autonomy in response to the human control. The main idea is to design a telerobotics system that allows a shift from manual to autonomous operation, dynamically, via different human-robot roles and relationships. These roles are Master-Slave, Supervisor-Subordinate, Partner-Partner, Teacher-Learner and Full Autonomous mode by the robot. This paper presents the theoretical foundations and the requirements for seamless HRI. An implementation of the concept and an experimental evaluation is presented.