Dynamic Window Based Force Reflection for Safe Teleoperation of a Mobile Robot via Internet

The paper presents an Internet-based teleoperation system that enables a human operator to safely control a mobile robot in unknown and dynamic environments. The operator controls the robot using a joystick and a graphical user interface which displays images forwarded from the camera mounted on the robot. A sonar ring on the robot circumference is used to measure obstacle range information, and a dynamic window algorithm is used to convert that information into a force, which is than reflected to the operator’s hand via joystick, providing additional haptic information about obstacles in the robot vicinity. To overcome the instability caused by the unknown and varying time delay an event-based teleoperation system is employed to synchronize actions of the operator and teleoperated mobile robot. The experiments with the Pioneer 2DX mobile robot verified effectiveness of the developed system.