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Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems

Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems EDITORIAL published: 27 April 2022 doi: 10.3389/frobt.2022.915187 Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems 1 2 3 Yanan Li *, Atsushi Takagi and Keng Peng Tee 1 2 Department of Engineering and Design, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom, Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Tokyo, Japan, Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, Singapore Keywords: shared control, tele-operation, physical human-robot interaction, human-robot collaboration, robot control Editorial on the Research Topic Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems Tele-operation systems have been extensively studied in the literature and used in various robotic applications, such as in surgery, search and rescue, space exploration, nuclear decommissioning, etc. However, most traditional tele-operation systems adopt a leader-follower paradigm, where the tele- operated robot follows the human operator’s guidance. This unilateral interaction does not leverage the robot’s autonomy and imposes cognitive and physical loads on the human operator. Conversely, if the robot’s strengths such as local sensing and accurate, fast execution capabilities are fully utilized, the human’s control effort can be reduced while simultaneously increasing task efficiency and performance. Therefore, shared control between a human and a robot is essential to develop an advanced teleoperation system. However, designing shared control for teleoperation systems raises many challenges. From the robot’s perspective, decision marking must be in place to address questions such as when the robot should follow the human, when it should not, and what to do if there are conflicts between the two. The designer must also be aware of how the human adapts to the robot’s behavior, and how the latter’s design should incorporate such human motor adaptation. In this Research Topic, we have invited researchers and practitioners in relevant fields to discuss Edited and reviewed by: these challenging issues. Four articles have been collected, which provide interesting insights on this Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, topic and present promising results. National Technical University of Athens, Greece Zolotas et al. introduce a virtual reality system to assist human users in manipulation tasks. Their system provides human users visualization of joint limit and environmental constraints of the robot *Correspondence: follower, by displaying manipulability polytopes at the teleoperated robot’s end-effector. They first Yanan Li [email protected] use a pilot study to find graphical cues and virtual reality setup that are suitable for the task of screwing in a set of bolts. Then, through comparative experiments, they conclude that their system Specialty section: increases safety in terms of preventing erratic motion, despite reducing the task completion speed, This article was submitted to compared to teleoperation without shared control. Robotic Control Systems, Costi et al. investigate how shared control can mitigate the negative effects of time delay that is a section of the journal inevitable in teleoperation. They propose and compare four different control modalities of increasing Frontiers in Robotics and AI autonomy: non-predictive human control (HC), predictive human control (PHC), (shared) predictive Received: 07 April 2022 human-robot control (PHRC), and predictive robot control (PRC). They consider an object reaching Accepted: 12 April 2022 and recognition task, and develop an internal model to predict the sensor’s output that is used to Published: 27 April 2022 increase the robot’s autonomy. Their experimental results show that the two control architectures with Citation: increasing autonomy, PHRC and PRC, outperform the other two in terms of faster task completion and Li Y, Takagi A and Tee KP (2022) increased performance. By further comparing PHRC and PRC, they show that PHRC can avoid Editorial: Shared Control for Tele- undesired hard contact with the environment that is observed under PRC, thus suggesting the Operation Systems. advantage of shared control and concluding that PHRC represents a good trade-off between reaching Front. Robot. AI 9:915187. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2022.915187 accuracy, task completion speed and contact safety. Frontiers in Robotics and AI | www.frontiersin.org 1 April 2022 | Volume 9 | Article 915187 Li et al. Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems Hagmann et al. confirm the usefulness of virtual fixtures in AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS teleoperation in minimally invasive robotic surgery, while they YL drafted the manuscript. All authors read and edited the propose a shared control parametrization engine to retrieve manuscript, and agreed with its content. procedural context information from a digital twin. Their idea is to abstract surgical training from real surgical operations, which offers a relatively well-definedenvironment andisthuseasiertomodel.They first use a digital twin to estimate geometric and semantic task states, FUNDING and then based on the estimation they parameterize assistance functions that are used to provide assistance in surgical training. This work was supported in part by the Royal Society Grant IES/ R3/193136 and United Kingdom EPSRC Grant EP/T006951/1. Results from a pilot study demonstrate that novel users profitfrom haptic augmentation during training of certain tasks, such that they Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the perform a task faster, more accurately and with less cognitive load. absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a Hu et al. take an overview of shared control for teleoperation, potential conflict of interest. which they refer to as human–machine telecollaboration paradigm in Publisher’s Note: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors their opinion article. They separate the telecollaboration paradigm and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of into three sub-frameworks: human–machine bidirectional the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in augmentation framework, where human and machine contribute this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or to a same task with flexible roles; augmented machine intelligence endorsed by the publisher. under human guidance, where the machine infers the human’sintent Copyright © 2022 Li, Takagi and Tee. This is an open-access article distributed under to enhance its intelligence; augmented human performance leveraging the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, machine intelligence, where the machine provides assistance to the distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original human. The authors particularly review the deployment of large-scale author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication autonomous robots during the Covid-19 pandemic and show the in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, feasibility and great potential of telecollaboration. distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Frontiers in Robotics and AI | www.frontiersin.org 2 April 2022 | Volume 9 | Article 915187 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Frontiers in Robotics and AI Pubmed Central

Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems

Li, Yanan; Takagi, Atsushi; Tee, Keng Peng
Frontiers in Robotics and AI , Volume 9 – Apr 27, 2022
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Pubmed Central
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Copyright © 2022 Li, Takagi and Tee.
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2296-9144
DOI
10.3389/frobt.2022.915187
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Abstract

EDITORIAL published: 27 April 2022 doi: 10.3389/frobt.2022.915187 Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems 1 2 3 Yanan Li *, Atsushi Takagi and Keng Peng Tee 1 2 Department of Engineering and Design, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom, Communication Science Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Tokyo, Japan, Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore, Singapore Keywords: shared control, tele-operation, physical human-robot interaction, human-robot collaboration, robot control Editorial on the Research Topic Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems Tele-operation systems have been extensively studied in the literature and used in various robotic applications, such as in surgery, search and rescue, space exploration, nuclear decommissioning, etc. However, most traditional tele-operation systems adopt a leader-follower paradigm, where the tele- operated robot follows the human operator’s guidance. This unilateral interaction does not leverage the robot’s autonomy and imposes cognitive and physical loads on the human operator. Conversely, if the robot’s strengths such as local sensing and accurate, fast execution capabilities are fully utilized, the human’s control effort can be reduced while simultaneously increasing task efficiency and performance. Therefore, shared control between a human and a robot is essential to develop an advanced teleoperation system. However, designing shared control for teleoperation systems raises many challenges. From the robot’s perspective, decision marking must be in place to address questions such as when the robot should follow the human, when it should not, and what to do if there are conflicts between the two. The designer must also be aware of how the human adapts to the robot’s behavior, and how the latter’s design should incorporate such human motor adaptation. In this Research Topic, we have invited researchers and practitioners in relevant fields to discuss Edited and reviewed by: these challenging issues. Four articles have been collected, which provide interesting insights on this Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, topic and present promising results. National Technical University of Athens, Greece Zolotas et al. introduce a virtual reality system to assist human users in manipulation tasks. Their system provides human users visualization of joint limit and environmental constraints of the robot *Correspondence: follower, by displaying manipulability polytopes at the teleoperated robot’s end-effector. They first Yanan Li [email protected] use a pilot study to find graphical cues and virtual reality setup that are suitable for the task of screwing in a set of bolts. Then, through comparative experiments, they conclude that their system Specialty section: increases safety in terms of preventing erratic motion, despite reducing the task completion speed, This article was submitted to compared to teleoperation without shared control. Robotic Control Systems, Costi et al. investigate how shared control can mitigate the negative effects of time delay that is a section of the journal inevitable in teleoperation. They propose and compare four different control modalities of increasing Frontiers in Robotics and AI autonomy: non-predictive human control (HC), predictive human control (PHC), (shared) predictive Received: 07 April 2022 human-robot control (PHRC), and predictive robot control (PRC). They consider an object reaching Accepted: 12 April 2022 and recognition task, and develop an internal model to predict the sensor’s output that is used to Published: 27 April 2022 increase the robot’s autonomy. Their experimental results show that the two control architectures with Citation: increasing autonomy, PHRC and PRC, outperform the other two in terms of faster task completion and Li Y, Takagi A and Tee KP (2022) increased performance. By further comparing PHRC and PRC, they show that PHRC can avoid Editorial: Shared Control for Tele- undesired hard contact with the environment that is observed under PRC, thus suggesting the Operation Systems. advantage of shared control and concluding that PHRC represents a good trade-off between reaching Front. Robot. AI 9:915187. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2022.915187 accuracy, task completion speed and contact safety. Frontiers in Robotics and AI | www.frontiersin.org 1 April 2022 | Volume 9 | Article 915187 Li et al. Editorial: Shared Control for Tele-Operation Systems Hagmann et al. confirm the usefulness of virtual fixtures in AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS teleoperation in minimally invasive robotic surgery, while they YL drafted the manuscript. All authors read and edited the propose a shared control parametrization engine to retrieve manuscript, and agreed with its content. procedural context information from a digital twin. Their idea is to abstract surgical training from real surgical operations, which offers a relatively well-definedenvironment andisthuseasiertomodel.They first use a digital twin to estimate geometric and semantic task states, FUNDING and then based on the estimation they parameterize assistance functions that are used to provide assistance in surgical training. This work was supported in part by the Royal Society Grant IES/ R3/193136 and United Kingdom EPSRC Grant EP/T006951/1. Results from a pilot study demonstrate that novel users profitfrom haptic augmentation during training of certain tasks, such that they Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the perform a task faster, more accurately and with less cognitive load. absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a Hu et al. take an overview of shared control for teleoperation, potential conflict of interest. which they refer to as human–machine telecollaboration paradigm in Publisher’s Note: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors their opinion article. They separate the telecollaboration paradigm and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of into three sub-frameworks: human–machine bidirectional the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in augmentation framework, where human and machine contribute this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or to a same task with flexible roles; augmented machine intelligence endorsed by the publisher. under human guidance, where the machine infers the human’sintent Copyright © 2022 Li, Takagi and Tee. This is an open-access article distributed under to enhance its intelligence; augmented human performance leveraging the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, machine intelligence, where the machine provides assistance to the distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original human. The authors particularly review the deployment of large-scale author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication autonomous robots during the Covid-19 pandemic and show the in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, feasibility and great potential of telecollaboration. distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Frontiers in Robotics and AI | www.frontiersin.org 2 April 2022 | Volume 9 | Article 915187

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Frontiers in Robotics and AI – Pubmed Central

Published: Apr 27, 2022

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