Teleplanning by human demonstration for VR-based teleoperation of a mobile robotic assistant

Focuses on the integration of local path planning techniques in a multimodal teleoperation interface, for the efficient remote control of a mobile robotic assistant. The main principle underlying this scheme is related to finding new ways to establish an efficient human-robot cooperation framework, where humans and robots take charge of the parts of the tasks that they can perform more efficiently. For the teleoperation of a mobile robotic platform, a simple application of this general principle could be to commit the human operator in performing the necessary global planning operations, which are more demanding in terms of complex reasoning and required "intelligence", while other more local tasks such as collision avoidance and trajectory optimization are dedicated to the telerobotic system. We propose an implementation of this principle within a mobile robot teleoperation interface integrating virtual reality techniques and Web standards. The paper describes the multimodal interface and the design principles followed, as well as the integration of a local path planning method. This scheme, called "computer-assisted teleplanning by human demonstration", aims at providing active assistance to the human operator, enabling him to indicate in a natural way the desired global motion plan, for a more efficient teleoperation of a mobile robotic assistant.