Human Supervised Control of a Humanoid Robot for Non-Conventional Emergency Response

This article presents work of a research & development effort that focuses on realizing effective human-supervised humanoid robot control for non-conventional emergency response. The devastation and dangerous operational environments caused by natural and man-made disasters have been the motivation for the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC). Humanoid robots have advantages for completing a wide variety of tasks in human environments such as opening doors, turning valves, operating power tools, traversing rough terrain and driving a vehicle. This article also discusses various approaches, results, and lessons learned. Meeting the requirements of the DRC tasks using an Atlas humanoid robot has been the main research and development effort. One of the lessons learnt is that providing effective and easy to use human-robot interfaces is critical. Since the DRC poses realistically challenging operating conditions for the human, the interfaces need to have sufficient autonomy to minimize human errors.