A lightweight, cross-platform, multiuser robot visualization using the cloud

Abstract

Cloud robotics emphasizes harnessing the power of the Web for robotics. Modern mobile devices connect to the Web and are convenient user interfaces. We decided to explore what was possible at the intersection of robotics, the Web, and mobile devices by creating a mobile web interface for a humanoid robot. This paper describes our implementation of a monitoring interface for high degree of freedom (DOF) robots that works with both desktop and mobile devices. Using only standard web technologies, our application provides a rich 3D interface that displays the robot's pose, orientation, and sensor data, and can update at 30Hz. It is easy to use, because there is no software for the user to install; it runs using the device's mobile browser. The web interface can be deployed on a private or public cloud, and is designed to scale to support hundreds or thousands of viewers by utilizing cloud services. The system was successfully tested with two different robots and on multiple browsers and mobile devices.