Page 51 - Introduction to AI Robotics

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1 From Teleoperation To Autonomy
human to perform delicate operations. However, it still requires a high com-
munication bandwidth.
CONTROL TRADING An alternative approach is control trading, where the human initiates an ac-
tion for the robot to complete autonomously. The human only interacts with
the robot to give it a new command or to interrupt it and change its orders.
The overall scheme is very much like a parent giving a 10-year old child a
task to do. The parent knows what the child is able to do autonomously
(e.g., clean their room). They have a common definition (clean room means
go to the bedroom, make the bed, and empty the wastebaskets). The parent
doesn’t care about the details of how the child cleans the room (e.g., whether
the wastebasket is emptied before the bed is made or vice versa). Control
trading assumes that the robot is capable of autonomously accomplishing
certain tasks without sharing control. The advantage is that, in theory, the
local operator can give a robot a task to do, then turn attention to another
robot and delegate a task to it, etc. A single operator could control multiple
robots because they would not require even casual monitoring while they
were performing a task. Supervisory control also reduces the demand on
bandwidth and problems with communication delays. Data such as video
images need to be transferred only when the local is configuring the remote
for a new task, not all the time. Likewise, since the operator is not involved
in directly controlling the robot, a 2.5 minute delay in communication is ir-
relevant; the robot either wrecked itself or it didn’t. Unfortunately, control
trading assumes that robots have actions that they can perform robustly even
in unexpected situations; this may or may not be true. Which brings us back
to the need for artificial intelligence.
Sojourner exhibited both flavors of supervisory control. It was primarily
programmed for traded control, where the geologists could click on a rock
and Sojourner would autonomously navigate close to it, avoiding rocks, etc.
However, some JPL employees noted that the geologists tended to prefer to
use shared control, watching every movement. A difficulty with most forms
of shared control is that it is assumed that the human is smarter than the
robot. This may be true, but the remote may have better sensor viewpoints
and reaction times.

1.6 The Seven Areas of AI

Now that some possible uses and shortcomings of robots have been covered,
it is motivating to consider what are the areas of artificial intelligence and