Using Automatic Robot Programming for Space Telerobotics

The projected increase in the use of robots in space will make their increased autonomy essential. Direct teleoperation of robots in complicated, repetitive tasks, such M those found in space, can be very tedious. Robot autonomy would relieve the operators from unnecessary fatigue as well as improving reliability and cost (I]. One step towards improving the autonomy of robots consists of having a system capable of planning simple grasp and assembly operations. This goal seems to be a fairly simple and short term objective and yet, it has only been achieved for very well structured environments. The early research on automatic planning of robot operations j2,3,4] focused exclusively on simple situations involving completely modeled environments. hlore recent work has now made it possible to design systems working in much more general environments, including environments with significant uncertair.ty. These environments resemble the type of environment one can expect to find in the vicinity of a space station. This type of environment can include complex parts and six degree-offreedom revolute arms, all of it modeled with a C.ID system. In this paper we describe Handey, a new system tha! embodies many of the fruits of this more recent research. While Handey still makes strong assumptions about its environments and tasks, we believe that these assumptions are realistic enough so that Handey can contribute towards improving the tele-operation of manipulators.