A reconfigurable multi-touch framework for teleoperation tasks

A wide variety of remotely controlled mobile robots have been developed in the past. Despite the evolution in robotics functionalities, not much effort has been made to customize control interfaces to meet user preferences and needs. General users can find difficulties in controlling mobile robots by standard interfaces. On the other hand, recent advances in multi-touch devices now allow researchers to design and implement intuitive and user friendly interfaces. This paper presents recent efforts to control mobile platforms by using customizable multi-touch gestures drawn on a commonly available hand-held device. In particular, a live stream video coming from an on board camera allows both to automatically and manually control the platform to accomplish target tracking and following tasks.