Cooperative control of visual displays for telemanipulation

Two cooperative control schemes for telerobot visual displays are addressed. In the first scheme, on-the-screen visual enhancements such as reference lines indicating the vertical height of the robot hand, a stick figure model of the robot hand, and its projection on the horizontal grid plane are constructed by the interactive cooperation between the human operator and the telerobotic system, and then superimposed on the video screen. Experimental results with a five-degree-of-freedom robot and a frame grabber indicate that superimposition of visual enhancements on the video screen greatly improves telemanipulation task performance. In the second scheme, the position and orientation of an object on video screens are determined interactively; these then assist the telerobotic system in executing the human operator's task-level commands autonomously.