PROGRESS TOWARDS TASK-LEVEL COLLABORATION BETWEEN ASTRONAUTS AND THEIR ROBOTIC ASSISTANTS

Abstract

In the future, NASA envisions robotic assistants seamlessly interacting with astronauts. These robots must be capable of understanding abstract tasks, and must also reliably execute the tasks. We make progress towards these goals by firstly developing a task-level programming language, called RMPL, that robots can directly interpret and understand. Secondly, we develop a hybrid executive that can execute the tasks reliably, even while adapting to disturbances and execution uncertainties.