From supervisory control to co-operative control

This paper reviews different forms of human and computers co-operative control in teleoperation. The need to define a new form of co-operative control is addressed due to the increase capabilities of computers in perception, decision-making and learning. A brief description of shared & traded control and supervisory control is given with their differences from cooperative control. A co-operative control concept based on the less strict sense of supervisory control(1) is proposed. In this concept, human operators and computers can interact and co-operate in the operation at both intelligence and execution levels. Humans and computers' distinctive and overlapping advantages are utilized in the control concept. A framework for developing co-operative control systems is introduced with functional components depicted. A telerobotic system with a demonstration task has been developed as the test-bed to investigate different issues of co-operative control. The task description and operational mode of the system are also given.