As robotic systems grow in complexity and autonomy, the need for effective and intuitive operator interfaces and task programming tools becomes more acute. The operator must be able to preview, verify, adjust, and observe the robot's plans and actions, and make system-level decisions about the appropriate level of shared autonomy-both before and during a mission. Operator interfaces must be usable by non-experts, even in the presence of degraded situational awareness and environmental uncertainty. Indeed, when used in mission-critical domains such as space or other hazardous environments, these tools must engender confidence that tasks will be performed safely and effectively by providing transparency into the robot's decision-making processes. In this paper, we introduce the PHARAOH system for robot operation. PHARAOH integrates the PRIDE electronic procedure software developed by TRACLabs for NASA field operations with the affordance template visual task programming framework developed to command remote robot systems performing manipulation tasks with varying levels of autonomy. Together, these tools enable an operator to define and follow task procedures while providing access to state-of-the-art robot operation tools as necessary. This blending of human and robot capabilities in a well-defined architecture, covering levels of abstraction from teleoperation to autonomous execution, provides enormous flexibility for mission planners and operators, and represents a significant new tool for robot operation in the field.

The predictive interactive graphical interface (PIGI) is a suite of tools developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) for supervising robots across expected Earth-moon time delays (5-10 second round trip). These tools improve interaction between a human supervisor and a remote robot by mitigating the effects of the time delay. Using a combination of robot behavior prediction and task queuing, PIGI enables the supervisor to reduce robot idle time, which leads to more efficient completion of the tasks. PIGI was used in 2007 and 2008 to remotely command five different NASA robots in Arizona, California, Texas, and Washington, all from a single location at JSC in Houston.

The Peer-To-Peer Human-Robot Interaction (P2P-HRI) project is developing techniques to improve task coordination and collaboration between human and robot partners. Our work is motivated by the need to develop effective human-robot teams for space mission operations. A central element of our approach is creating dialogue and interaction tools that enable humans and robots to flexibly support one another. In order to understand how this approach can influence task performance, we recently conducted a series of tests simulating a lunar construction task with a human-robot team. In this paper, we describe the tests performed, discuss our initial results, and analyze the effect of intervention on task performance.

This paper presents experimental results of preliminary research into multi-robot coordination for construction tasks. Experiments demonstrate that an autonomous "roving eye" robot can provide feedback to a manipulator to align targets from a wider variety of situations than is possible with fixed cameras, without sacrificing the accuracy provided by cameras at close range. The roving eye changes its location autonomously based on current images of the manipulated object and target, always striving for the best view of the task.

This paper describes a prototype robot and the necessary path planning and control for space inspection applications. The robot is the first generation of a free-flying robotic camera that will assist astronauts in constructing and maintaining the Space Station. The robot will provide remote views to astronauts inside the Space Shuttle and future Space Station, and to ground controllers. The paper describes a planar robot prototype autonomously moving about an air bearing table, and introduces a method for determining paths in three-dimensions for efficient fuel use. Finally, the paper describes the software simulation of the path planner with the future Space Station.

In this paper we demonstrate that a passive vibration strategy can bring a 1 degree of freedom ball to a known trajectory from all possible initial configurations. We draw motivation from the problem of parts feeding in sensorless assembly. We provide simulation results suggesting the relevance of our analytical results to the parts feeding problem.

We report on our initial efforts to build robot feedback controllers that develop increased capability from simpler constituent controllers. Previous work with our three degree of freedom robot has resulted in a machine that exhibits various dynamically dexterous skills of superlative ability but very narrow behavioral scope. We focus here on the development of both a formalism and practice for the composition of constituent controllers. The composite should yield automatically purposive combinations of these skills that reach goals no one of the defining controllers could have achieved in isolation. The specific task we initially target, the "dynamical pick and place", requires the robot to acquire balls that have been "randomly" thrown into its work space and set them safely at rest in a specified location. We present a brief overview of the constituent behaviors and a mechanism for their combination along with documentation of our preliminary empirical successes.

Based on psychological studies which show that metaphors and other non‐literal constructions are comprehended in the same amount of time as comparable literal constructions, some researchers have concluded that literal meaning is not computed during comprehension of non‐literal constructions. In this paper, we suggest that the empirical evidence does not rule out the possibility that literal meaning is constructed. We present a computational model of comprehension of non‐literal expressions which is consistent with the data, but in which literal meaning is computed. This model has been implemented as part of a unification‐based natural language processing system, called LINK.