A novel platform for internet-based mobile robot systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a new integrated hardware and software platform for internet-connected mobile robots, enabling remote operation and autonomous safety features, facilitating research in tele-operation and networked robotics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel architecture combining hardware and software components for real-time internet-based mobile robot control and safety.

Findings

System successfully operates over the real Internet

Autonomous obstacle avoidance implemented

Platform facilitates research in tele-operation

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a software and hardware structure for on-line mobile robotic systems. The hardware mainly consists of a Multi-Sensor Smart Robot connected to the Internet through 3G mobile network. The system employs a client-server software architecture in which the exchanged data between the client and the server is transmitted through different transport protocols. Autonomous mechanisms such as obstacle avoidance and safe-point achievement are implemented to ensure the robot safety. This architecture is put into operation on the real Internet and the preliminary result is promising. By adopting this structure, it will be very easy to construct an experimental platform for the research on diverse tele-operation topics such as remote control algorithms, interface designs, network protocols and applications etc.