SBIR-STTR Award

This project will develop interface methods, vision algorithms, and navigation behaviors for UGV supervisory control. Supervisory control reduces the operator workload while providing ease-of-use, predictability and responsiveness in unstructured, dynamic, and unpredictable real-world situations. In our concept, the operator interacts with the UGV via a touch-sensitive display showing video from an on-board navigation camera or a 3rd party camera in overwatch. The operator "clicks" on a single point to tell the UGV to "Go There!", sketches a path/waypoints, designates a lead vehicle, or assigns the UGV to follow video collected from an earlier lead vehicle. Sketched control measures direct the UGV to avoid selected types of terrain. We will develop core system functions for visual navigation, recognizing denied terrain, and visual homing. We will produce a demonstrator system, test data to assess performance and computational burden tradeoffs for alternative formulations, and a preliminary system design for Phase II implementation. Previous R&D demonstrated monocular video destination/waypoint tracking and visual terrain classification. We will investigate enhancements, including hybrid methods combining the best features of alternative algorithms. We will extend the methods to estimate distance, to incorporate data from additional sensors including stereo cameras, and to produce driving and navigation commands.

This project will produce an upgrade ìkitî for mobile robots with robotic arms. The kit provides supervisory control and/or augmented teleoperation to deploy IED detection sensors for vehicle inspection with minimal workload burden, thus allowing the operator to concentrate on visual inspection and assessment of sensor data. The kit consists of spatial awareness sensors, perception processing, motion behaviors, and operator interface. Spatial awareness sensors and processing provide distance and surface orientation measurements for the robotic motion behaviors and the operator interface. The supervisory control interface enables the operator to designate goals for semi-autonomous robot motion and/or IED detector deployment behaviors. The augmented teleoperation interface provides operator with enhanced spatial perception (distance and surface orientation cues), shared control options (the operator controls some degrees of freedom while the robot automatically maintains a spatial relationship to the target), and robot position control. Phase II builds on Phase I core technologies to track designated interest points even when temporarily obscured by the IED detector or other parts of the robot, to estimate surface orientation of the at the interest point, to generate visual-servoing speed control commands for precision position control, and to generate steering commands for an approach orthogonal to the inspection surface.

Keywords:
Augmented Teleoperation, Supervisory Control, Collaborative Control