Reactive control as a substrate for telerobotic systems

Reactive control, a recently emerged paradigm for guiding robots in unstructured and dynamic environments, and related work are reviewed. Pertinent telerobotics research for intelligent navigation is briefly surveyed. A scheme-based reactive control system that allows teleoperators to direct a mobile platform without undue concern for local obstacle avoidance is described. By using an analog of the potential field methodology, repulsive forces are constructed around nearby obstacles, allowing the robot to avoid them and enabling the telerobot operator to concentrate on the more global aspects of the mission. The structure for this paradigm enables real-time computation. The principles are extendible to manipulator operations. Results of robot simulation and experiments that demonstrate the concepts described are reported.<<ETX>>