DARPA Robotics Challenge: Towards a User-Guided Manipulation Framework for High-DOF Robots

Abstract — Supervision and teleoperation of high degree-of-freedom robots is a complex task due to environmental con-straints such as obstacles and limited communication, as well as task specific requirements such as using more than one end-effector at the same time. In this work we present a supervision and teleoperation framework that allows an operator to see the surroundings of a robot in 3D, make necessary adjustments for a dual or single arm manipulation task, preview the task in simulation before execution, and finally execute the task on a real robot. The framework has been applied to the valve turning task of the DARPA Robotics Challenge on the PR2, Hubo2+, and DRCHubo robots. High degree-of-freedom (High-DOF) robots requires solv-ing a large set of problems in designing interfaces and systems in a way that will work reliably in real-worl