Augmented reality in Internet telerobotics using multiple monoscopic views

Usher, a user interface for an Internet telerobot has been developed. It overlays multiple monoscopic images of the robot´s environment with a three-dimensional stick figure visualization of the robot´s 5 degrees of freedom. The operator drags the elements of this visualization with a pointing device to obtain additional depth cues, measure size, location and orientation of objects, and to control the manipulator. This paper describes the interface design from a human-computer interaction perspective. The user interface design was developed by applying the ecological approach of visual perception to a data visualization of the 5 degrees of freedom. This leads to a simple stick-figure-like structure that can be used to specify a pose in 3D space using only two-dimensional input devices. The user interface is implemented as a Java applet and can be used to control Australia´s Telerobot on the Web at http://telerobot.mech.uwa.edu.au/.