Workload reduction via coordinated control during free-flying manipulation

Future space servicing operations may involve manually controlled manipulation from a free-flying platform; direct control of such a free-flying telerobot will impose a large workload on the operator. In order to reduce the workload on the human operator, a supervisory control strategy is developed where the operator only controls the end effector, rather than specifying the motion of the entire vehicle-manipulator system. Two control modes are compared: independent, where the operator directly controls the entire system; and coordinated, which combines pseudoinverse and reaction-compensation techniques. Experimental results indicate that the supervisory mode was best for new tasks, where the operator was not fully trained