There is a clearly established need to perform work, remotely, in the undersea environment. Typical tasks to be performed will range from observation and inspection to servicing defective undersea equipment, or recovering a lost item. While part of the work site may be structured, the environment is unstructured (the ocean). In addition, the structured part of the work site may be damaged or in unknown condition. This lack of structure, as well as the non-repetitive nature of the tasks, require constant adaptation to the environment. This program involves research in the area of teleoperation with the feedback delay that occurs with surface-based teleoperation in untethered submersibles. The delay in obtaining position and force feedback from remote slave arms makes operation extremely difficult. A novel combination of graphics and manipulator programming will interface the teleoperator master arms to a graphics display of the remote environment. The operator's actions will be monitored to provide both kinesthetic and visual feedback and to generate symbolic motion commands to the remote slave. The research will be performed jointly and in connection with, the French LAAS Laboratory in Toulouse, France.
