Supervised Autonomous Locomotion and Manipulation for Disaster Response with a Centaur-like Robot

Mobile manipulation tasks are one of the key challenges in the field of search and rescue (SAR) robotics requiring robots with flexible locomotion and manipulation abilities. Since the tasks are mostly unknown in advance, the robot has to adapt to a wide variety of terrains and workspaces during a mission. The centaur-like robot Centauro has a hybrid legged-wheeled base and an anthropomorphic upper body to carry out complex tasks in environments too dangerous for humans. Due to its high number of degrees of freedom, controlling the robot with direct teleoperation approaches is challenging and exhausting. Supervised autonomy approaches are promising to increase quality and speed of control while keeping the flexibility to solve unknown tasks. We developed a set of operator assistance functionalities with different levels of autonomy to control the robot for challenging locomotion and manipulation tasks. The integrated system was evaluated in disaster response scenarios and showed promising performance.Comment: In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Madrid, Spain, October 201

Centaur: NASA’s mobile humanoid designed for filed work

Abstract -NASA's future lunar and martian missions will require a suite of advanced robotic systems to complete tasks during precursor visits and to assist humans while present on the surface. The Centaur is a new mobile, dexterous manipulation system designed with this future role in mind. Centaur combines the sophisticated upper body dexterity of NASA's humanoid, Robonaut, with a rugged and versatile four-wheeled base. This combination allows for robotic use of human tools and interfaces in remote locations by incorporating design improvements to the existing Robonaut that target the challenges of planetary field work: rough terrain, a varied environment (temperature, dust, wind, etc.), and distance from human operators. An overview of Centaur's design is presented focusing on the features that serve to mitigate the above risks and allow the robot to perform human-like tasks in unstructured environments. The success of this design is also demonstrated by the results of a recent coordinated field demonstration in which Centaur, under both teleoperated and autonomous control, cooperated with other NASA robots

HRS: Rover Technologies

No abstract availabl

Autonomous Systems, Robotics, and Computing Systems Capability Roadmap: NRC Dialogue

Contents include the following: Introduction. Process, Mission Drivers, Deliverables, and Interfaces. Autonomy. Crew-Centered and Remote Operations. Integrated Systems Health Management. Autonomous Vehicle Control. Autonomous Process Control. Robotics. Robotics for Solar System Exploration. Robotics for Lunar and Planetary Habitation. Robotics for In-Space Operations. Computing Systems. Conclusion

Chapter Introduction to the Use of Robotic Tools for Search and Rescue

Modern search and rescue workers are equipped with a powerful toolkit to address natural and man-made disasters. This introductory chapter explains how a new tool can be added to this toolkit: robots. The use of robotic assets in search and rescue operations is explained and an overview is given of the worldwide efforts to incorporate robotic tools in search and rescue operations. Furthermore, the European Union ICARUS project on this subject is introduced. The ICARUS project proposes to equip first responders with a comprehensive and integrated set of unmanned search and rescue tools, to increase the situational awareness of human crisis managers, such that more work can be done in a shorter amount of time. The ICARUS tools consist of assistive unmanned air, ground, and sea vehicles, equipped with victim-detection sensors. The unmanned vehicles collaborate as a coordinated team, communicating via ad hoc cognitive radio networking. To ensure optimal human-robot collaboration, these tools are seamlessly integrated into the command and control equipment of the human crisis managers and a set of training and support tools is provided to them to learn to use the ICARUS system

Introduction to the Use of Robotic Tools for Search and Rescue

Modern search and rescue workers are equipped with a powerful toolkit to address natural and man-made disasters. This introductory chapter explains how a new tool can be added to this toolkit: robots. The use of robotic assets in search and rescue operations is explained and an overview is given of the worldwide efforts to incorporate robotic tools in search and rescue operations. Furthermore, the European Union ICARUS project on this subject is introduced. The ICARUS project proposes to equip first responders with a comprehensive and integrated set of unmanned search and rescue tools, to increase the situational awareness of human crisis managers, such that more work can be done in a shorter amount of time. The ICARUS tools consist of assistive unmanned air, ground, and sea vehicles, equipped with victim-detection sensors. The unmanned vehicles collaborate as a coordinated team, communicating via ad hoc cognitive radio networking. To ensure optimal human-robot collaboration, these tools are seamlessly integrated into the command and control equipment of the human crisis managers and a set of training and support tools is provided to them to learn to use the ICARUS system

Preliminary Results for the Multi-Robot, Multi-Partner, Multi-Mission, Planetary Exploration Analogue Campaign on Mount Etna

This paper was initially intended to report on the outcome of the twice postponed demonstration mission of the ARCHES project. Due to the global COVID pandemic, it has been postponed from 2020, then 2021, to 2022. Nevertheless, the development of our concepts and integration has progressed rapidly, and some of the preliminary results are worthwhile to share with the community to drive the dialog on robotics planetary exploration strategies. This paper includes an overview of the planned 4-week campaign, as well as the vision and relevance of the missiontowards the planned official space missions. Furthermore, the cooperative aspect of the robotic teams, the scientific motivation, the sub task achievements are summarised

Telelocomotion—remotely operated legged robots

© 2020 by the authors. Li-censee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Teleoperated systems enable human control of robotic proxies and are particularly amenable to inaccessible environments unsuitable for autonomy. Examples include emergency response, underwater manipulation, and robot assisted minimally invasive surgery. However, teleoperation architectures have been predominantly employed in manipulation tasks, and are thus only useful when the robot is within reach of the task. This work introduces the idea of extending teleoperation to enable online human remote control of legged robots, or telelocomotion, to traverse challenging terrain. Traversing unpredictable terrain remains a challenge for autonomous legged locomotion, as demonstrated by robots commonly falling in high-profile robotics contests. Telelocomotion can reduce the risk of mission failure by leveraging the high-level understanding of human operators to command in real-time the gaits of legged robots. In this work, a haptic telelocomotion interface was developed. Two within-user studies validate the proof-of-concept interface: (i) The first compared basic interfaces with the haptic interface for control of a simulated hexapedal robot in various levels of traversal complexity; (ii) the second presents a physical implementation and investigated the efficacy of the proposed haptic virtual fixtures. Results are promising to the use of haptic feedback for telelocomotion for complex traversal tasks