Telerobotic control using augmented reality

A taxonomy for classifying human mediated control of remote manipulation systems is proposed, based on three dimensions: degree of machine autonomy, level of structure of the remote environment, and extent of knowledge, or modellability, of the remote world. For certain unstructured and thus difficult to model environments, a case is made for remote manipulation by means of director/agent control, rather than telepresence. The ARGOS augmented reality toolkit is presented, as a means for gathering quantitative spatial information about-i.e., for interactively creating a partial model of a remotely viewed 3D worksite. This information is used for off-line local programming of the remote manipulator-i.e. virtual telerobotic control-and when ready the final commands are transmitted for execution to the manipulator control system.