The Teleworkbench: A Platform for Performing and Comparing Experiments in Robot Navigation

Abstract

Experiments are essential ingredients of science to compare, validate or refute theories, methodologies, hypotheses and approaches. However, in robotics, the comparison of methods using experiments is difficult because of the variety of robotic platforms and experiment environments.\nIn this paper we describe the Teleworkbench and discuss the role it can take on the quest of creating repeatable and reproducible experiments in robot navigation, obtaining com- parable results as well as evaluating and analysing results. The Teleworkbench can control up to 64 mini-robots simultaneously, log user defined quantities for post-experiment analysis and monitor the experiments via cameras mounted in the ceiling. A web interface makes the Teleworkbench accessible for remotely located users. Thus, the Teleworkbench is a platform that robotic scientists can use in order to evaluate the developed approaches quantitatively and qualitatively as well as to com- pare their methods amongst each other.