Joint Motion Clusters in Servomanipulator Operations1

The Consolidated Fuel Reprocessing Program (CFRP) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is developing advanced teleoperator systems for maintenance of future nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities. Remote maintenance systems developed by CFRP emphasize man-in-the-loop teleoperation. This paper reports the results of a recent experiment which investigated how users interact with a multi-degree of freedom servomanipulator. Principal components analysis performed on data collected during completion of typical remote maintenance tasks indicates that joint motions may be summarized by two orthogonal clusters, one which represents fine-adjusting motions and one which represents slewing motions. Implications of these findings for servomanipulator design are discussed.