Sliding Autonomy for a Human Centered System in a Space Exploration Domain

The project I worked on, called SASP (Sliding Autonomy System in Plexil), is a control software for mobile robots aimed in supporting two main concepts:
• the sliding autonomy approach, meaning that the robot can operate at different degrees of autonomy,
• and the human-robot interaction, where the user acts as an active supervisor, who can step in under a specific system request or on his own.
The final aim is to increase the control activities the human operator can execute, by providing him with all the necessary information (and eventually suggestions) to make him able to take a conscious decision.
The system framework must be context independent since the mission is not fully specified yet and it has to be adaptable to many different scenarios of execution. A preliminary work includes the definition of an architecture that supports different use cases: control of virtual, and then real, robots, human-robot cooperation. The human supervisor’s remote control should be supported by the autonomous system: it should guide the human supervisor’s interactions, during for example a request for help, providing him with possible solutions that avoid undesirable consequences. Besides, the system should be capable of learning during its execution at different levels:
from human-robot interactions for example to avoid boring the operator with questions he had already answered many times in the past, or, moreover, from previous actions outcomes to optimize performances by adjusting its autonomy level.
The whole project must be developed according to the human centered design pattern ISO [15]. Final users will be involved in the development process, testing the demonstrators to give out suggestions in order to improve its usability.
SASP is basically an AI software where on one hand there is a mission, defined as a composition of tasks written in Plexil, while on the other hand there is a software that handles all the functionalities of the system, starting from the simulation of the rover atomic actions, like ”takepicture”, and coming to the pattern of interaction with the human operator. A simple graphical user interface was developed as well, representing the operator’s point of view.