Task Lines and Motion Guides

Abstract

The new task lines and motion guides approaches to telerobotics are described. Motion guides is a new paradigm for teleoperation of a robot where the path is teleoperated rather than the robot, and the robot is constrained to follow the path. Continuous commands to the robot are only onedimensional: forward, back, or halt along the motion guide. Task lines have subtasks attached to motion guides. The task lines and motion guides have been implemented in a virtual reality environment to enable task description and execution in a natural, virtual reality graphics environment rather than via direct interaction with a command program. Subtasks are represented in the virtual reality environment by icons attached to the motion guides. The combination of task lines and motion guides is valuable for ground control of Space Station robots, which is the initial application for this technology.

The multifunction automated crawling system (MACS)

“…Figures 3 and 4 show side and bottom views of MACS. Development of the MACS crawler is benefiting from leveraging ongoing NASA miniature planetary rover [6], telerobotics [7], and NDE technology development.…”

Mars pathfinder mission Internet-based operations using WITS

“…The engineering team can specify waypoint tasks for the waypoints, using Waypoint Task windows, in the same way that the science team can specify target tasks for science targets. The task association with scene icons uses the Task Lines approach for visual representation and editing of robotic sequences [7].…”