Bilateral Human-Robot Control for Semi-Autonomous UAV Navigation

The SHERPA-project (www.sherpa-project.eu) focuses on developing a collaboration between human rescuers and ground/aerial robots for improving rescue activities. In this collaboration, the human should be able to use the robots with ease when necessary, while the robots should be autonomous when the human does not demand control. The MSc research focuses on the control of the slave device using a semi-autonomous controller, where variations in parameters can be made by the operator to support the autonomous con- troller. The key-aspects of this research are that the operator's discrete outputs and the robot's continuous inputs are clearly separated and that the operator can assist the robot without being cognitively overloaded by the robot. The overall goal of the semi-autonomous control architec- ture is to combine the stability and precision of autonomous control with the cognitive abilities of the operator. The architecture has been validated through simulations and experiments.