Remote Tele-operated Robot

Professor Abhilash Pandya

Wayne State University

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Computer Assisted Robot Enhance Systems

In this talk, a brief outline will be given first on three separate but related remote robotic applications—Medical Robotics, Military Robotics and NASA robotics. All three have a remote operator controlling a robot to do various tasks. The focus will then be on the NASA robotic implementation of Augmented Reality techniques as follows:

End-effector control of robots using just remote camera views is difficult due to lack of perceived correspondence between the joysticks and the end-effector coordinate frame. This paper reports the positive effects of Augmented Reality visual cues on operator performance during end-effector controlled tele-operation using only camera views. Our solution is to overlay a color-coded coordinate system on the end-effector of the robot using AR techniques. This mapped and color-coded coordinate system is then directly mapped to similarly color-coded joysticks used for control of both position and orientation. The AR view along with mapped markings on the joystick give the user a clear notion of the effect of their joystick movements on the end-effector of the robot. All camera views display this registered dynamic overlay information on-demand. A preliminary test using fifteen subjects comparing control of performance with and without the coordinate mapping was performed by using a simple insertion task. Preliminary results indicate a significant reduction in distance, reversal errors and mental workload.

Friday, November 3, 2006

4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

1500 EECS