Online since the summer of 1998, the PumaPaint project can be considered an elder statesman of networked robotics. Although never a profound technical achievement to attach a PUMA robot to a network, the extended period of operation permits interesting observations of long-term usage trends, comparison of operation through several generations of user interface and a voluminous body of artwork to consider. This paper will present a discussion of long-term usage trends of the PumaPaint project over six years of operation at two locations. We will present a study of the most interesting artwork produced in the last two years and discuss trends from the perspective of the canvas. We will also present a case study of a recent phenomenon: the appearance of a dedicated and persistent vandal who returned to the site nightly for a period of several months. The second section of the paper will detail our current project: moving the PumaPaint concept to three dimensions. We are continuing the theme of artistic creation, this time allowing web users to model clay. We have partially completed construction on a pair of opposing anthropomorphic hands with force sensing capability and expect to have these operational by spring 2005. This paper will present the “RoboSculpt” concept; detail the design and proposed user interface and present the progress to date.

The PumaPaint project is an online robot that allows World Wide Web users to remotely create original artwork. The original site located at Wilkes University operated from June of 1998 to March of 2000 with approximately 25,000 unique-addressed machines downloading the interface to produce about 500 canvases. The new site at Roger Williams University opened to the public in August of 2002. After noticing that over fifty-percent of the machines downloading the interface were located outside of the United States we decided to create a more elegant and intuitive interface aimed at users from varied countries and varied ages. This work addresses issues, concerns, and resolutions developed to provide this updated interface. The current site was updated integrating this new interface in November of 2002 and evaluation of the interface is currently underway.

The teleprogramming system is a supervisory control approach to time delayed teleoperation that incorporates predictive graphics and reactive skills to accomplish dexterous manipulation tasks in the presence of significant time delay. This paper presents an experimental effort to validate the teleprogramming system using the GRASP Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania as the operator station and the TROPICS Laboratory of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the remote site. The teleprogramming experiment involved operator supervisory control of a robot performing puncture and slice operations on the thermal blanket securing tape of a satellite repair mission sub-task This experiment was successfully performed in August, 1994 using the Internet as the sole medium of communication. During experimentation, messages experienced time-varying time delay between three and fifteen seconds with an average delay of approximately six seconds.

In many teleoperation applications including undersea and shallow space operations, communication time delay limits the applicability of force reflecting master-slave devices. We instead employ teleprogramming, a supervisory control approach to remote manipulation. A behavior-based controller, constructed under the principles of the subsumption architecture, fulfils the need for semi-autonomy at the remote site prescribed by supervisory control. In this paper we present an interface allowing operator interaction with the behavior-based controller. The use of a behavior-based controller provides a rich means of presenting diagnostic and kinesthetic state information to the operator when used with diagnostic interfaces previously developed. We demonstrate the supervisory control system on a GRASP Laboratory mock-up of a slicing task performed during a satellite repair operation where a robot held knife cuts securing tape along seams of panels of a thermal protection blanket.>

The teleprogramming system employs a supervisory control approach where operator interaction with a virtual environment directs the actions of a remote manipulator operating semi-autonomously. We focus on the detection, diagnosis, and recovery from unexpected situations frequently arising during normal operation. The teleprogramming system employs a single thread approach to error recovery that is inherent in the system design. We perform two experimental tasks, each highlighting a different role for the operator, using the teleprogramming system with a simulated communication time delay of 10 seconds. In the first task of inserting and extracting bolts, the operator assumes the role of "task level reasoning" or task planning and sequencing, task state reasoning, and diagnostic procedure generation. In the second task, puncturing and slicing duct tape, the operator performs "action level reasoning" or diagnosing and correcting unexpected situations and determining success of actions. Our experimental results indicate that complex tasks can be accomplished when the operator is provided multiple and overlapping forms of feedback.>