Robotics and Automation Society
             6:00 PM, Tuesday, 10 April, 2001

  TELEROBOTS AND TELEPRESENCE: MAKING DISTANCE DISAPPEAR

                 Prof. Thomas B. Sheridan
          Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   (http://www-me.mit.edu/people/personal/sheridan.htm)


                          ABSTRACT

   This talk will review the history and current status of
teleoperators (devices that enable a person to operate at a
distance, where "operate" includes sensing, mobility, and
manipulation). Some teleoperators are controlled
continuously by human operators, either in master-slave
position control, or in rate-control as commonly
accomplished with a steering wheel and/or multi-axis control
stick. A telerobot is a subclass of teleoperator in which
the human intermittently instructs a computer as to task
subgoals, and the computer closes the loop through the
telerobot sensors and actuators to accomplish the task.

   These ideas are quite generic, to the point where a
modern manufacturing or process plant, or even an airplane,
can be considered a telerobot. What roboticists have learned
about command language (how to instruct a telerobot) and
decision aids (displays to help the telerobot avoid
catastrophic moves) have direct application in other fields,
such as how the pilot of modern aircraft, whether manned or
unmanned, should instruct the flight management computer to
take the aircraft to new location in airspace.

   While the technologies of seeing or hearing at a distance
are mature, those for touching and feeling (haptics) at a
distance are not. The talk will describe some current
developments in haptics, and some of the reasons why this
technology has been so slow in catching up with television
and audio.

   Telepresence is the sensation of being somewhere that you
are not. Through new head-mounted displays, auditory
convolvotron, and haptic devices, a vivid sense of
telepresence can be achieved. These are the same devices as
are being used in virtual reality, and indeed, from a human
user perspective, telepresence and virtual reality are the
same. Efforts to define and measure "presence" have raised
interesting questions relating to philosophy and even
religion, which will be mentioned.

   Current telerobot and telepresence applications in space,
deep ocean, and surgery will be discussed.


                     SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

   Thomas B. Sheridan received the BS degree from Purdue
Univ., the MS degree from Univ. of California at Los
Angeles, the ScD degree from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and the Dr. (honorary) from Delft Univ. of
Technology, Netherlands. For most of his professional career
he has remained at MIT, where currently he is Ford Professor
of Engineering and Applied Psychology Emeritus in the
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of
Aeronautics and Astronautics, continuing to teach and serve
as Director of the Human-Machine Systems Laboratory. He has
also served as a visiting professor at University of
California Berkeley, Stanford, Delft (Netherlands), Kassel
(Germany), and Ben Gurion (Israel).

   His research interests are in experimentation, modeling,
and design of human-machine systems in air, highway, and
rail transportation, space and undersea robotics, process
control, arms control, medicine, and virtual reality.  He
has published over 200 technical papers in these areas.

   He is co-author of Man-Machine Systems (MIT Press 1974,
1981; USSR, 1981), coeditor of Monitoring Behavior and
Supervisory Control (Plenum, 1976), author of Telerobotics,
Automation, and Human Supervisory Control (MIT Press, 1992),
co-editor of Perspectives on the Human Controller (Erlbaum,
1997), and author of Humans and Automation (forthcoming). He
is currently Senior Editor of the MIT Press journal
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments and serves
on several editorial boards. He chaired the National
Research Council's Committee on Human Factors, and has
served on numerous government and industrial advisory
committees. He is principal of Thomas B. Sheridan and
Associates, a consulting firm.

   Dr. Sheridan served as President of the IEEE Systems,
Man, and Cybernetics Society and Editor of IEEE Transactions
on Man-Machine Systems. He was also President and is a
Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He has
received numerous awards during a long and distinguished
career.

                    MEETING INFORMATION

   The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet on
Tuesday, April 10, 2001, at Wellesley High School at 6:00 PM
for informal discussions and for the formal presentation
between 6:30 and 7:30 PM.

   The group will have a no-host dinner afterwards at
Bertucci's, where more conversations can take place with the
guest speaker. The meetings are open to the general public,
and all are welcome at the dinner afterwards.

   For more information contact Bruce Levens at 508-271-1233
or our new chapter email address: info@robotics-boston.org.

                         DIRECTIONS

   From Route 128, take either Route 9 or Route 16 West.
From the junction of Routes 9 and 16, follow Route 16
(Washington Street) West past the Wellesley Hills commuter
rail station (within walking distance of the school), then
turn left onto Rice Street.  Wellesley High School is on the
left. Parking is available in a lot just beyond the school.

   For a web map showing the location of Wellesley High
School, go to the MapBlast site at http://www.mapblast.com/
and enter the following information in the indicated
locations:

     Street Address           50 Rice St
     City, State ZIP          Wellesley, MA

and then click on the MapBlast icon.  The resulting map can
be zoomed in or out by clicking in the balloon area on the
right.

   For more information about our section, visit our web
site at our new registered domain URL:

          http://www.robotics-boston.org/