An Object-Defined Remote Robot Control Interface

Abstract

In this paper, the authors propose a new remote robot control interface that reduces the complexity of robot control. The proposed interface constraints the robot's movements depending on the target object that the operator wants to observe. The interface displays the constraints to the operator on a screen with the help of Augmented Reality (AR) technology. We named the interface “Object-defined remote robot control interface” because the interface provides suitable procedures for the objects that need to be operated on. The interface receives information about the robot and candidate objects from a camera that has been set up to capture a bird's-eye view of the target environment and displays this information on a touch screen display. When the operator selects an object as the target by touching it on the display, constrained tracks for the robot's movements and their corresponding AR representations are generated on the screen. A block assembly task was conducted to evaluate this interface. The results showed the system's effectiveness in terms of both task completion time and operation time.