UMI: an interactive supervisory and shared control system for telerobotics

An interactive user interface, UMI (User-Macro-Interface), and its complete task execution system have been developed and implemented for use by an operator to describe, simulate, and execute tasks on a multiarm telerobot. The operator interactively sets up the execution environment and specifies input parameters for a variety of available task primitives. Several task primitives can be stored together as a task sequence for later sequence execution. The primitives or sequences can be executed on a graphics simulator or on the JPL Telerobot, which includes two task execution manipulators, one manipulator used for positioning cameras, and two six-degree-of-freedom force reflecting hand controllers used for shared and teleoperation modes of execution. In supervisory control, the operator sets up a task primitive or a sequence of primitives and executes the task autonomously. In teleoperation, the user specifies desired initialization parameters and controls the arms with the hand controllers. In shared control, teleoperated inputs from the operator hand controllers are merged during task execution with inputs from user parameterized autonomous primitives. In all modes of operation, UMI allows the operator to stop execution at any time. The UMI interface is intended as the operator interface at a local command site to prepare and send commands to a remote space telerobot.< >