Common Educational Teleoperation Platform for Robotics Utilizing Digital Twins

The erratic modern world introduces challenges to all sectors of societies and potentially introduces additional inequality. One possibility to decrease the educational inequality is to provide remote access to facilities that enable learning and training. A similar approach of remote resource usage can be utilized in resource-poor situations where the required equipment is available at other premises. The concept of Industry 5.0 (i5.0) focuses on a human-centric approach, enabling technologies to concentrate on human–machine interaction and emphasizing the importance of societal values. This paper introduces a novel robotics teleoperation platform supported by the i5.0. The platform reduces inequality and allows usage and learning of robotics remotely independently of time and location. The platform is based on digital twins with bi-directional data transmission between the physical and digital counterparts. The proposed system allows teleoperation, remote programming, and near real-time monitoring of controlled robots, robot time scheduling, and social interaction between users. The system design and implementation are described in detail, followed by experimental results

Dynamic Optimized Bandwidth Management for Teleoperation of Collaborative Robots

A real-time dynamic and optimized bandwidth management algorithm is proposed and used in teleoperated collaborative swarms of robots. This method is effective in complex teleoperation tasks, where several robots rather than one are utilized and where an extensive amount of exchanged information between operators and robots is inevitable. The importance of the proposed algorithm is that it accounts for Interesting Events (IEs) occurring in the system\u27s environment and for the change in the Quality of Collaboration (QoC) of the swarm of robots in order to allocate communication bandwidth in an optimized manner. A general dynamic optimized bandwidth management system for teleoperation of collaborative robots is formulated in this paper. The suggested algorithm is evaluated against two static algorithms applied to a swarm of two humanoid robots. The results demonstrate the advantages of dynamic optimization algorithm in terms of task and network performance. The developed algorithm outperforms two static bandwidth management algorithms, against which it was tested, for all performance parameters in 80% of the performed trials. Accordingly, it was demonstrated that the proposed dynamic bandwidth optimization and allocation algorithm forms the basis of a framework for algorithms applied to real-time highly complex systems

From teleoperation to the cognitive human-robot interface

Robots are slowly moving from factories to mines, construction sites, public places and homes. This new type of robot or robotized working machine – field and service robots (FSR) – should be capable of performing different kinds of tasks in unstructured changing environments, not only among humans but through continuous interaction with humans. The main requirements for an FSR are mobility, advanced perception capabilities, high "intelligence" and easy interaction with humans. Although mobility and perception capabilities are no longer bottlenecks, they can nevertheless still be greatly improved. The main bottlenecks are intelligence and the human - robot interface (HRI). Despite huge efforts in "artificial intelligence" research, the robots and computers are still very "stupid" and there are no major advancements on the horizon. This emphasizes the importance of the HRI. In the subtasks, where high-level cognition or intelligence is needed, the robot has to ask for help from the operator. In addition to task commands and supervision, the HRI has to provide the possibility of exchanging information about the task and environment through continuous dialogue and even methods for direct teleoperation. The thesis describes the development from teleoperation to service robot interfaces and analyses the usability aspects of both teleoperation/telepresence systems and robot interfaces based on high-level cognitive interaction. The analogue in the development of teleoperation interfaces and HRIs is also pointed out. The teleoperation and telepresence interfaces are studied on the basis of a set of experiments in which the different enhancement-level telepresence systems were tested in different tasks of a driving type. The study is concluded by comparing the usability aspects and the feeling of presence in a telepresence system. HRIs are studied with an experimental service robot WorkPartner. Different kinds of direct teleoperation, dialogue and spatial information interfaces are presented and tested. The concepts of cognitive interface and common presence are presented. Finally, the usability aspects of a human service robot interface are discussed and evaluated.reviewe

Earthmoving construction automation with military applications: Past, present and future

© ISARC 2018 - 35th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction and International AEC/FM Hackathon: The Future of Building Things. All rights reserved. Amongst increasing innovations in frontier engineering sciences, the advancements in Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) has brought about a new horizon in construction applications. There is evidence of the increasing interest in RAS technologies in the civil construction sector being reflected in construction efforts of many military forces. In particular, Army or ground-based forces are frequently called upon to conduct construction tasks as part of military operations, tasks which could be partially or fully aided by the employment of RAS technologies. Along with recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical system infrastructure, it is essential to examine the current maturity, technical feasibility, and affordability, as well as the challenges and future directions of the adoption and application of RAS to military construction. This paper presents a comprehensive survey and provides a contemporary and industry-independent overview on the state-of-the-art of earthmoving construction automation used in defence, spanning current world’s best practice through to that which is predicted over the coming years

Teleoperation of a service robot using a mobile device

Teleoperation is a concept born with the rapid evolution of technology, with an intuitive meaning "operate at a distance." The first teleoperation system was created in the mid 1950s, which were handled chemicals. Remote controlled systems are present nowadays in various types of applications. This dissertation presents the development of a mobile application to perform the teleoperation of a mobile service robot. The application integrates a distributed surveillance (the result of a research project QREN) and led to the development of a communication interface between the robot (the result of another QREN project) and the vigilance system. It was necessary to specify a communication protocol between the two systems, which was implemented over a communication framework 0MQ (Zero Message Queue). For the testing, three prototype applications were developed before to perform the test on the robot