Enhancing Supervised Autonomy for Extraterrestrial Applications by Sharing Knowledge between Humans and Robots

Abstract

As the human race continue its exploration farther into the solar system, extraterrestrial habitats can be placed on asteroids, moons, and planets, such as Mars. These habitats would require on continuous monitoring and maintenance in order to remain safe and functional. However, permanent astronaut on-site may not be available for this task. A possible alternative to direct inspection is remote inspection with a teleoperated robot. In order to cope with long communication round-trip time and possible data package loss, we propose to utilize a knowledge-driven supervised-autonomy approach to control a robot. The information to interact with the environment is thereby shared between the robot and the operator. With this concept, an intuitive human-robot interface can be designed to solve even complex manipulation tasks. This interface will be utilized as a part of the SUPVIS-JUSTIN experiment within the ESA METERON project.