Dynamic autonomy for mobile manipulation

Emergency response demands a very different kind of robotic solution than those created for known environments (e.g. factory robots) and well understood tasks (e.g. power plant maintenance). This paper discusses efforts undertaken by the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to develop highly mobile, highly dexterous robots that can function autonomously or semi-autonomously as a human surrogate in critical emergency situations. This paper reports progress made on two projects pursued under the auspices of the INL mobile manipulation initiative. The first involves collaboration with NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) to merge an autonomous mobile robot base running the INL Intelligence Kernel, a behavior based robot control architecture, with the NASA Robonaut torso. The Robonaut torso was originally developed for use on the International Space Station, but also has strong potential to be used across a variety of national security, homeland defense, energy and search and rescue applications. The second capability pursued under the INL mobile manipulation initiative involves merging autonomous reaching and grasping behaviors developed at the University of Texas with the INL Intelligence Kernel to carry out tasks such as autonomously opening doors and retrieving objects within cluttered indoor settings. The ability of these systems to exploit environments and tools designed for humans allow them to be used in emergency situations where there is no time to develop a niche-specific robot, such as time critical threats involving Chemical/Biological/Radiological Nuclear (CBRN) hazards.