Web Based Teleoperation of a Humanoid Robot

TL;DR

This paper presents a cloud-based web teleoperation system for humanoid robots, enabling control via any internet-connected device, thus increasing accessibility and facilitating research and development in humanoid robotics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel cloud-integrated web-based teleoperation framework for humanoid robots, demonstrating feasibility with inexperienced users controlling a complex robot via smartphones.

Findings

Successful remote control of humanoid robot using web browsers

Demonstrated dual-arm manipulation task execution

Accessible platform for research and development

Abstract

The Cloud-based Advanced Robotics Laboratory (CARL) integrates a whole body controller and web-based teleoperation to enable any device with a web browser to access and control a humanoid robot. By integrating humanoid robots with the cloud, they are accessible from any Internet-connected device. Increased accessibility is important because few people have access to state-of-the-art humanoid robots limiting their rate of development. CARL's implementation is based on modern software libraries, frameworks, and middleware including Node.js, Socket.IO, ZMQ, ROS, Robot Web Tools, and ControlIt! Feasibility is demonstrated by having inexperienced human operators use a smartphone's web-browser to control Dreamer, a torque-controlled humanoid robot based on series elastic actuators, and make it perform a dual-arm manipulation task. The implementation serves as a proof-of-concept and foundation upon which many advanced humanoid robot technologies can be researched and developed.