56,823 research outputs found
Virtual Borders: Accurate Definition of a Mobile Robot's Workspace Using Augmented Reality
We address the problem of interactively controlling the workspace of a mobile
robot to ensure a human-aware navigation. This is especially of relevance for
non-expert users living in human-robot shared spaces, e.g. home environments,
since they want to keep the control of their mobile robots, such as vacuum
cleaning or companion robots. Therefore, we introduce virtual borders that are
respected by a robot while performing its tasks. For this purpose, we employ a
RGB-D Google Tango tablet as human-robot interface in combination with an
augmented reality application to flexibly define virtual borders. We evaluated
our system with 15 non-expert users concerning accuracy, teaching time and
correctness and compared the results with other baseline methods based on
visual markers and a laser pointer. The experimental results show that our
method features an equally high accuracy while reducing the teaching time
significantly compared to the baseline methods. This holds for different border
lengths, shapes and variations in the teaching process. Finally, we
demonstrated the correctness of the approach, i.e. the mobile robot changes its
navigational behavior according to the user-defined virtual borders.Comment: Accepted on 2018 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent
Robots and Systems (IROS), supplementary video: https://youtu.be/oQO8sQ0JBR
BCI-Based Navigation in Virtual and Real Environments
A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a system that enables people to control an external device with their brain activity, without the need of any muscular activity. Researchers in the BCI field aim to develop applications to improve the quality of life of severely disabled patients, for whom a BCI can be a useful channel for interaction with their environment. Some of these systems are intended to control a mobile device (e. g. a wheelchair). Virtual Reality is a powerful tool that can provide the subjects with an opportunity to train and to test different applications in a safe environment. This technical review will focus on systems aimed at navigation, both in virtual and real environments.This work was partially supported by the Innovation, Science and Enterprise Council of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain), project P07-TIC-03310, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, project TEC 2011-26395 and by the European fund ERDF
Recommended from our members
Towards Rapid Generation and Visualisation of Large 3D Urban Landscapes for Mobile Device Navigation
In this paper a procedural 3D modelling solution for mobile devices is presented based on scripting algorithms allowing for both the automatic and also semi-automatic creation of photorealistic quality virtual urban content. The combination of aerial images, GIS data, 2D ground maps and terrestrial photographs as input data coupled with a user-friendly customized interface permits the automatic and interactive generation of large-scale, accurate, georeferenced and fully-textured 3D virtual city content, content that can be specially optimized for use with mobile devices but also with navigational tasks in mind. Furthermore, a user-centred mobile virtual reality (VR) visualisation and interaction tool operating on PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) for pedestrian navigation is also discussed. Via this engine, the import and display of various navigational file formats (2D and 3D) is supported, including a comprehensive front-end user-friendly graphical user interface providing immersive virtual 3D navigation
A Framework for Interactive Teaching of Virtual Borders to Mobile Robots
The increasing number of robots in home environments leads to an emerging
coexistence between humans and robots. Robots undertake common tasks and
support the residents in their everyday life. People appreciate the presence of
robots in their environment as long as they keep the control over them. One
important aspect is the control of a robot's workspace. Therefore, we introduce
virtual borders to precisely and flexibly define the workspace of mobile
robots. First, we propose a novel framework that allows a person to
interactively restrict a mobile robot's workspace. To show the validity of this
framework, a concrete implementation based on visual markers is implemented.
Afterwards, the mobile robot is capable of performing its tasks while
respecting the new virtual borders. The approach is accurate, flexible and less
time consuming than explicit robot programming. Hence, even non-experts are
able to teach virtual borders to their robots which is especially interesting
in domains like vacuuming or service robots in home environments.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
This Far, No Further: Introducing Virtual Borders to Mobile Robots Using a Laser Pointer
We address the problem of controlling the workspace of a 3-DoF mobile robot.
In a human-robot shared space, robots should navigate in a human-acceptable way
according to the users' demands. For this purpose, we employ virtual borders,
that are non-physical borders, to allow a user the restriction of the robot's
workspace. To this end, we propose an interaction method based on a laser
pointer to intuitively define virtual borders. This interaction method uses a
previously developed framework based on robot guidance to change the robot's
navigational behavior. Furthermore, we extend this framework to increase the
flexibility by considering different types of virtual borders, i.e. polygons
and curves separating an area. We evaluated our method with 15 non-expert users
concerning correctness, accuracy and teaching time. The experimental results
revealed a high accuracy and linear teaching time with respect to the border
length while correctly incorporating the borders into the robot's navigational
map. Finally, our user study showed that non-expert users can employ our
interaction method.Comment: Accepted at 2019 Third IEEE International Conference on Robotic
Computing (IRC), supplementary video: https://youtu.be/lKsGp8xtyI
- …