Design of a PDA-based telerobotic system

Teleoperation system plays an important role in executing tasks under hazardous environments. Unfortunately, most of the traditional teleoperation systems are expensive and bulky thus not suitable to provide real-world services. This paper introduces a novel architecture for the teleoperation of mobile robot based on Personal Digital Assistant(PDA) with mobility, facility and low cost. The architecture mainly consists of a Sony AIBO robot and a PDA, which communicate with each other via wireless network. A client-server software architecture is employed, in which the client software is insulated from the low-level details of the server. TCP and UDP are respectively used to transmit control commands and feedback information to meet the different needs of the two kinds data. A friendly Graphic User Interface is also designed to make the teleoperation as maneuverable as possible. This architecture is implemented finally.The experiment results well demostrate the feasibility and effectiveness of such a PDA-based telerobotic architecture.