ARITI: an augmented reality interface for teleoperation on the internet

摘要

Modern teleoperator control architectures combine cleverly a supervised and a full manual operating mode. Nowadays the tendency is more oriented to supervisory since the bilateral coupling and direct robot control through a master-slave classical control has revealed many drawbacks. Among them, the operator's performance is affected by an inadequate visual feedback of the control actions. The visual feedback in turn is corrupted by the bandwidth limitation of communication support connecting the operator's site and to the remote one. This paper presents ARITI (acronym for Augmented Reality Interface for Telerobotics application via the Internet), a novel display interface enabling any distant person to remotely control/command a distant robot control via the Internet Network. A mixed perceptual concept based on a Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies is part of the control/command user interface, allowing one to easily perform a task and describe desired environment transformation that the robot has to perform. An important feature of the interface is the use of virtual fixtures as perceptual overlays to enhance operator performance in remote environments. These virtual fixtures, used during telemanipulation task and overlaid onto remote workspaces, could act to reduce both operator stress and mental processing and to allow none robotic-qualified (novice) people to perform remote tasks. Also, virtual fixtures may allow precision and performance to exceed natural human abilities when used for complex remote tasks.