Remote Controlling Mobile Robots with Adaptive Video Streaming and Augmented Reality

New generations of mobile robots enable to access challenging and dangerous environments such as oil platforms. To remotely control the mobile robot, the camera sensor data needs to be transmitted reliably and presented in an user- friendly way to the operator. Augmented Reality (AR) technology enables to show the camera data in a convenient way to the operator. Since the network and computing capabilities on the mobile robot are limited, the transmission of all camera streams can lead to a low frame rate. The lower frame rate results in a degraded user experience and can lead to accidents. We present a system, which adapts the request of camera images per stream to the field of view of the user. Additionally, the system adapts dynamically to changing network connection qualities. We show that with our adaptive system the Quality of Experience (QoE) of the remote operator of the robot increases noticeably, resulting in a user-friendly and efficient control of the mobile robot.