A virtual control environment for robot teleoperation via the Internet is presented. It comprises a Java3D-based real-time virtual representation of the robot and worksite, and uses a graphic panel, an environment for remote robot programming, and a dataglove with a 6D position tracker as the control interfaces. The use of virtual reality (VR) techniques for Internet teleoperation allow: (1) time delays inherent in IP networks to be suppressed and (2) the operator's work to be simplified and accelerated, compared to methods that use delayed TV images. The system realisation, with its use of open technologies Java, Java3D and 3-tier client/server architecture, provides portability among different computer platforms and types of robots. The efficiency of the VR-based methods developed has been verified for slow communication rates (0.1-0.5 KB/sec), where TV-based control methods are inapplicable. VR systems have been developed for the WWW-based control of the PUMA and CRS industrial robot manipulators. The particulars of these systems, the experiments undertaken, current issues, and directions of future work are presented.
['Igor R. Belousov', 'R. Chellali', 'Gordon Clapworthy']
Virtual reality tools for Internet robotics