A modular control station for semiautonomous mobile systems

In both the Research Institute for Human Engineering (FAT) and the Bochum Polytechnic a modular control station is being used for the development of autonomous mobile systems in a cooperative effort. In the FAT this control station is used to operate a robot vehicle with the dimensions of a fork lift truck. This vehicle performs driving missions in a factory hall. At the Bochum Polytechnis the same control station is used to operate a smaller robot vehicle (100 cm high and 50 cm wide) in the campus building. The development of the control station had to take into account completely different vehicles travelling at incompatible speeds in a different environment. Thus the systems approach started with a general design of a control station for an operator to guide a mobile land robot for a wide range of possible missions. The base software is composed of numerous hardware independent modules. The operator uses an approach with two monitors which present for example digital maps, display sensor data but also a normal TV picture from cameras on the robot vehicle. With the modular control station approach it should be easy to develop new applications for completely different environments and vehicle cinematics and to cooperate in the ongoing development of autonomous system components.