Immersive virtual environment for mobile platform remote operation and exploration

These days, robotic platforms are commonly used in operational conditions where manned operations are not practical, not cost-effective or too dangerous. Those robotic devices rely heavily on remote operations using imagery acquired by on-board sensors that provide quite limited situational awareness to the user. In difficult scenarios, this lack of good situational awareness could lead to the failure of the mission. This paper presents a new concept currently in development that will improve situational awareness of the remote platform operator through an immersive virtual environment. The system uses an immersive chamber (CAVE) in which the operator is able to visualize and interact with an avatar of a robot evolving in a 3D model of its area of operation. The 3D model is incrementally built from the remote platform sensor feeds and provides “persistent data” to the user. This paper presents the first phase of the work which involves the development of a concept demonstration prototype. The implementation uses a robot simulator instead of a real world robot in order to rapidly be able to evaluate the concept and perform experiments. The tools developed in simulation will serve as the base for further developments and support the transition to a real robotic platform.