Mobile Teleoperation Interfaces for Domestic Service Robots

Domestic service robots are envisioned to provide assistance to persons in need of help with their activities of daily living. These tasks require a comprehensive set of perception, control, and planning skills—beyond the state of the art of autonomous robots. On the other hand, direct control of complex robots requires special equipment and the full attention of the operator. Hence, it is necessary to combine state-of-the-art autonomous capabilities with the intelligence of users in a complementary way. We report on handheld user interfaces for domestic service robots that allow for teleoperating the robot on three levels of autonomy: body, skill, and task control. On the higher levels, autonomous behavior of the robot relieves the user from significant workload. If autonomous execution fails, or autonomous functionality is not provided by the robot system, the user can select a lower level of autonomy to solve a task. The benefits of providing adjustable autonomy in teleoperation have been successfully demonstrated at RoboCup@Home competitions.