Teleoperation, telerobotics and telepresence: A progress report

This paper briefly surveys and reports progress in the field of teleoperation, meaning human control of remote sensors and actuators. Included is the subclass of teleoperation called telerobotics, which means human supervisory control of remote semiautomatic systems, and the phenomenon of telepresence, in which special sensing and display technology enables the human to feel present at the remote location even though not really there. Current and new applications are reviewed. Techniques for human-computer cooperation in planning, commanding, and sensing are described. The telerobot is considered as a paradigm for any complex vehicle or process having many separate automatic control loops all of which are supervised by a human; some current examples are presented. Finally, opinions are given as to the current status of the field.