Interactive remote robot operation framework for rescue robot

Situation awareness and its ambiguities are some of the main problems for rescue robotics. In a disaster area, there are many obstacles and confined passages. The operator must perceive the environment and decide the robot motion based on limited sensor data. These make it difficult for the operator to perceive the situation. The operator should be aware of the relative size of the obstacles in comparison with the rescue robot and the direction of the robot to navigate the disaster area and avoid collisions with obstacles. In this paper, we propose a software framework to reduce these ambiguities. A 3D map constructed with a 3D laser scanner and a robot model in this map can reduce the ambiguities. We also estimate future robot paths using the control inputs. Then, we perform collision detection in the expected paths and their neighbors. The collision results are displayed in the reconstructed 3D map using iterative closest points(ICP) algorithm. In this paper, we define interactive remote robot operation(IRRO) by extracting the common properties for reducing the ambiguities and abstracting them. The IRRO is composed of two parts, a simulation and evaluation step for the future robot motion and an interactive user interface system.