Tele-presence: visual, audio and tactile feedback and control of a twin armed mobile robot

Robots are often required to function in environments which would be extremely dangerous or expensive when using direct human labour, however, computer control and intelligence are not sufficiently developed to permit the robots to perform these advanced technical tasks under their own initiative, and there is always a human operative in the loop. Ideally the operator would wish to input body motions (from legs, arm, hand and head) which the robot would duplicate, and receive from the remote sensors full visual, audio and tactile feedback of a quality and form comparable with that normally produced by the eyes, ears and skin. This work considers the development of input, control and feedback (visual, audio and tactile) systems (man-machine interface) for a twin armed mobile robot to be used in tele-presence applications. This multi-purpose human-machine interface provides the user with an enhanced degree of true control of and `feel´ for the task