Architecture for a Human-Robot Symbiotic System

Fred W. DePiero, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Wayne W. Manges, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Reid L. Kress, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Mike R. Kedl, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
William R. Hamel, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/SSST.1990.138117.

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NOTE: At the time of publication, the author Fred DePiero was affiliated with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Currently, August 2008, he is Assistant Dean of the College of Engineering at California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo.

Abstract

This paper describes a human-robot symbiont that is under development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. An overview of the symbiotic system is described that motivates the architecture that has been developed. The architecture is a hierarchical structure that consists of several expert systems which reside above a robot control interface. This interface allows the manipulator to be operated in both a teleoperated and autonomous mode. All these processes coexist with the lowest level of the hierarchy, which is a numerically intensive control algorithm. The architecture is implemented on five processors in a coarsely parallel system.