This paper presents a general purpose assistive tele-robot system that
is designed to manipulate objects in a three-dimensional environment
by using color and stereo vision. The incorporated vision system allow
s the user to operate the robot remotely simply by gesturing (pointing
with a laser pointer). In this vision-based tele-manipulation system,
the user is in the control loop actively interacting with the reactiv
e robot motion planner through a multimodal interface (vision and spee
ch). Because of this unique feature, the robot system has been simplif
ied and released from performing the complex object recognition tasks
that are often required by autonomous systems. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scien
ce B.V.