VR-based Teleoperation of a Mobile Robotic Assistant: Progress Report

Abstract

This report presents work in progress within the framework of a research project aiming at the development of a mobile robotic system to perform assistive tasks in a hospital environment. This robotic assistant will consist of a mobile robot platform equipped with a variety of on-board sensing and processing equipment as well as a small manipulator for performing simple fetch-and-carry operations. In this report, we focus on the design of the teleoperation system integrating virtual reality techniques and Web-based capabilities in the human operator interface. Relative work found in the literature in the fleld of intervention and service telerobotics is reviewed, and an overview of the methodologies that will be followed is presented. Some speciflc issues requiring particular attention for the design of a teleoperation system for the mobile robotic assistant are investigated and include: (a) the speciflcation of the teleoperation modes supported by the system, integrating various automatic computer assistance and shared-autonomy behaviour-based control modes, (b) the design of the user interface, built on Java technology to enable web-operation and support various multimodal VR-based functionalities, and (c) the integration with the other subsystems and control modules of the mobile robotic assistant, in the framework of a general teleoperation/telemanipulation control architecture.