There is a growing need for humans to perforin complex remote operations and to extend the intelligence and experience of experts to distant applications. A blending of human intelligence, modern information technology, remote control, and intelligent autonomous systems is required, and the authors have coined the term teleautonomous technology, or teleautomation, for methods for producing intelligent action at a distance. Teleautomation goes beyond autonomous control in that it blends in human intelligence and action as appropriate. It goes beyond teleoperation in that it incorporates as much autonomy as is possible or reasonable. A new approach for solving one of the fundamental problems facing teleautonomous systems is discussed in detail: the need to overcome time delays due to telemetry and signal propagation. New concepts, called time and position clutches, are introduced; these allow the time and position frames, respectively, between the local user control and the remote device being controlled to be desynchronized. The design and implementation of these mechanisms are described in detail. It is demonstrated that these mechanisms lead to substantial telemanipulation performance improvements, including the novel result of improvements even in the absence of time delays. The novel controls also yield a simple protocol for handoffs of the control of manipulation tasks between local operators and remote systems. © 1990 IEEE
