A modular planning/control architecture for the semi-autonomous control of telerobots in a hazardous environment

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has demonstrated, evaluated, and deployed a telerobotic approach for the remote retrieval of hazardous and radioactive wastes from underground storage tanks. The telerobotic system, built by Spar Aerospace Ltd., is capable of dislodging and removing sludge and gravel-like wastes without endangering the human operators through contact with the environment. Working in partnership with Washington University, ORNL has implemented an Event Based Planner/Function Based Sharing Control (FBSC) as an integral part of their overall telerobotic architecture. These aspects of the system enable the seamless union of the human operator and an autonomous controller in such a way to emphasize safety without any loss of performance. The cooperation between ORNL, Spar, and Washington University requires an open and modular control software architecture to enable the parallel development of various components of the system. ControlShell has been used as the underlying software architecture to help meet these criteria of generality and modularity.