Sapien Systems - Technology:DARPA

Technology Development

User Interfaces for Robot Systems

In this project, Sapien Systems is part of a working group for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Numerous projects are underway to develop robots that will operate autonomously. Mission plans for these devices will often have them operate in groups, typically managed by one supervisory operator. There will be a huge variation in size and type of the robots, from armed aircraft to humanoid soldiers to microscopic machines that will operate inside the body. Also, there will be numerous "outer loop" personnel, from senior command to maintenance people, who will need to know various details of the operational performance of the robots. Both the supervisory operators and the outer loop personnel will need information and control interfaces for the robot groups. Design of these interfaces will proceed from reviews of the usage of the robots, the interface technologies available and general design principles. Sapien Systems is reviewing the user needs to manage robots. Our development work has now focused on interaction with Robonaut, an autonomous or teleoperated humanoid robot. We are also advancing our user monitoring technology to be used in conjunction with the robot interface design.

Current Collaborators:

The following groups are working with Sapien Systems under this DARPA funded initiative.

Naval Research Laboratory: Intelligent Systems Section; Alan Schultz
Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Computation Intelligence Group; Dr. Lynne Parker
University of South Florida: Perceptual Robotics Laboratory; Dr. Robin Murphy
Vanderbilt University: Intelligent Robotics Laboratory; Dr. Kazuhiko Kawamura
Brigham Young University: Computer Science Department; Dr. Michael Goodrich
Pennsylvania State University: School of Information Sciences and Technology; Dr. Frank Ritter