CATs: Task Planning for Shared Control of Assistive Robots with Variable Autonomy

Abstract

From robotic space assistance to healthcare robotics, there is increasing interest in robots that offer adaptable levels of autonomy. In this paper, we propose an action representation and planning framework that is able to generate plans that can be executed with both shared control and supervised autonomy, even switching between them during task execution. The action representation -Constraint Action Templates (CATs) -combine the advantages of Action Templates [1] and Shared Control Templates [2]. We demonstrate that CATs enable our planning framework to generate goal-directed plans for variations of a typical task of daily living, and that users can execute them on the wheelchairrobot EDAN in shared control or in autonomous mode.

Autonomous Robots for Services—State of the Art, Challenges, and Research Areas

“…Samuel et al combined an analysis, sharing, and constraint clocks to achieve the shared control of assistive robots [ 48 ]. From what we have gathered, it is highlighted that Constraint Action Templates (CATs) are the first to allow a symbolic representation of these action sequences that can be shared and used for control and autonomy.…”