Supervised Remote Robot with Guided Autonomy and Teleoperation (SURROGATE): A framework for whole-body manipulation

Abstract

Abstract-The use of the cognitive capabilties of humans to help guide the autonomy of robotics platforms in what is typically called "supervised-autonomy" is becoming more commonplace in robotics research. The work discussed in this paper presents an approach to a human-in-the-loop mode of robot operation that integrates high level human cognition and commanding with the intelligence and processing power of autonomous systems. Our framework for a "Supervised Remote Robot with Guided Autonomy and Teleoperation" (SURRO-GATE) is demonstrated on a robotic platform consisting of a pan-tilt perception head, two 7-DOF arms connected by a single 7-DOF torso, mounted on a tracked-wheel base. We present an architecture that allows high-level supervisory commands and intents to be specified by a user that are then interpreted by the robotic system to perform whole body manipulation tasks autonomously. We use a concept of "behaviors" to chain together sequences of "actions" for the robot to perform which is then executed real time.

Architecture for in-space robotic assembly of a modular space telescope

“…Figure 12 shows photos of an experiment demonstrating force-controlled deployment of a DTM using dual-handed manipulation on the Surrogate robot at JPL. 94 This robot has two seven DOF arms mounted on a seven DOF torso. It incorporates force sensing wrists and a stereo vision system, as would be used for in-space robotic assembly.…”

Open-Loop Flight Testing of COBALT Navigation and Sensor Technologies for Precise Soft Landing

“…The sensor assembly attaches to the side of the payload frame and consists of the NDL optical head, the LVS camera, and an LN-200 Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) mounted inside of a stiffened structure, which maintains the relative sensor alignments critical for COBALT precision navigation. The COBALT hardware configuration leverages components from the prior ADAPT project, 16 as well as the SURROGATE 18 and RoboSimian 19 mobile robot programs. The payload volume is 0.127 m 3 and mass is 44.3 kg.…”

COBALT: Development of a Platform to Flight Test Lander GN&C Technologies on Suborbital Rockets

“…The components of COBALT are illustrated in Figure 2 (left) alongside a photo of the current hardware (right). This configuration leverages components from the prior ADAPT project, 8 as well as the SURROGATE 19 and RoboSimian 20 mobile robot programs. The COBALT payload volume is 0.127 m 3 and the target not-to-exceed mass (for Xodiac flights) is 48.5 kg.…”