Affiliations: [a] Department of Electronics and Informatics (ETRO), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium | [b] Department of Mechanics, Royal Military Academy, Brussels, Belgium
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Prof. Hichem Sahli, Department of Electronics and Informatics (ETRO), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 2 – B-1050 Brussel, Belgium. Tel.: +32 2 629 29 16; Fax: +32 2 629 28 83; E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: This paper extensively describes the operability of an advanced demonstration platform incorporating reflexive tele-operated control concepts developed on a mobile robot system. By operability, the creation of an opportunity to develop, simulate, tune and test in real-world environment, mobile robot navigation algorithms is meant. During testing in semi-structured environments, the use of an inertial tracker in combination with a head mounted display, improves significantly the situational awareness of the operator, creating a certain feeling of presence at the remote site. Both on hardware as well as on software level, system components have been elaborated to form a modular whole. In order to offer the opportunity to researchers/students for distance development of complex algorithms, emphasis is laid on communication between robot and operator, as well as communication between different system components, resulting in a distributed framework. The name of the framework is CoRoBA, which stands for Controlling Robots with CORBA, a standardized and popular middleware.
