Human–Robot Interface for Embedding Sliding Adjustable Autonomy Methods

This work discusses a novel human–robot interface for a climbing robot for inspecting weld beads in storage tanks in the petrochemical industry. The approach aims to adapt robot autonomy in terms of the operator’s experience, where a remote industrial joystick works in conjunction with an electromyographic armband as inputs. This armband is worn on the forearm and can detect gestures from the operator and rotation angles from the arm. Information from the industrial joystick and the armband are used to control the robot via a Fuzzy controller. The controller works with sliding autonomy (using as inputs data from the angular velocity of the industrial controller, electromyography reading, weld bead position in the storage tank, and rotation angles executed by the operator’s arm) to generate a system capable of recognition of the operator’s skill and correction of mistakes from the operator in operating time. The output from the Fuzzy controller is the level of autonomy to be used by the robot. The levels implemented are Manual (operator controls the angular and linear velocities of the robot); Shared (speeds are shared between the operator and the autonomous system); Supervisory (robot controls the angular velocity to stay in the weld bead, and the operator controls the linear velocity); Autonomous (the operator defines endpoint and the robot controls both linear and angular velocities). These autonomy levels, along with the proposed sliding autonomy, are then analyzed through robot experiments in a simulated environment, showing each of these modes’ purposes. The proposed approach is evaluated in virtual industrial scenarios through real distinct operators.