Semi-Autonomous Telepresence Robot for Adaptively Switching Operation Using Inhibition and Disinhibition Mechanism

In research on semi-autonomous telepresence robots, a problem in which remote operators become frustrated with autonomous operations that do not match their intention has been reported. However, in previous research, a general-purpose method for automatically switching between remote and autonomous operations has not been proposed. In this paper, through the use of a general purpose arbitration model, called the accumulator based arbitration model (ABAM), we propose an adaptive switching architecture for remote and autonomous operations, named "One Minder." We incorporated One Minder into a semi-autonomous telepresence system autonomizing contingent behaviors, and conducted experiments to verify its utility using a robot implementing the proposed architecture. As the experiment results indicate, it was shown that One Minder can adaptively switch between remote and autonomous operations without manual switching. In addition, One Minder was also shown to reduce the operational load and frustration given to a remote operator by allowing the arbitration to properly output an autonomous operation.