A teleoperating interface for ground vehicles using autonomous flying cameras

Navigating remote robots and providing awareness of the remote environment is essential in many teleoperated tasks. An external view on the remote robot, a bird's eye view, is thought to improve operator performance. In this paper we explore a novel design for providing such a third-person view for a ground vehicle using a dynamic, external camera mounted on a quadcopter. Compared to earlier methods that use 3D reconstruction to create third-person views, our approach comprises a true third-person view through a video feed. We so provide visually rich, live information to the operator. In an experiment simulating a search and rescue mission in a simplified environment, we compared our proposed design to a pole-mounted camera and to a traditional front-mounted camera. The third-person perspective provided by our flying camera and pole-mounted camera resulted in fewer collisions and more victims being located, compared to the front-mounted camera.