Modeling and constraining human interactions in shared control utilizing a discrete event framework

Human integration is essential in systems where autonomous control alone would not be successful. In this paper, we present a framework for integrating a human supervisor into an otherwise autonomous control system. To facilitate integration, discrete event systems theory is adopted to model human interactions. It is via this interaction model that human commands can be combined with commands from an automated control system. For control synthesis, a method based on constraints is being used to generate velocity commands from the autonomous task level controller. The constraints are also utilized to limit human input so that erroneous human input is minimized. The methods are demonstrated by experiments