Improvement of RISE Mobile Robot Operator Training Tool

Abstract

In the chapter the framework for RISE (Risky Intervention and Environmental Surveillance) mobile robot operator training design is presented. The basic idea of the framework is to provide advanced software tools to improve the performance of the mobile robot simulation design that are applicable for operator training. The simulator is the end product of the framework. To achieve realistic rigid body simulation and realistic rendering the NVIDIA PhysX engine and the OGRE (Open Graphic Rendering Engine) are used. The compatibility between the framework software and CAD modeling tools such as SolidWorks was essential, therefore virtual models are exchangeable using COLLADA format. The simulator can be integrated with control panel of the mobile robot. It is possible to simulate the behavior of several types of robots such as caterpillar or wheeled. The improvement presented in this chapter is related to the problem of automatic environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations. The approach related to semantic mapping is used and in consequence semantic simulation engine is implemented. Semantic simulation engine is composed by data registration module, semantic entities identification module and environment model generation module. Presented result is a new approach related to mobile robots applications and potentially can improve the process of advanced mobile robot application design and professional training of the operators. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task not only because of the complexity of the mobile robot but also because of several factors related to different task execution. The study of the human-robot interactions (HRI) during a real rescue is presented in Casper & Murphy (2003) Bedkowski, Kowalski & Piszczek (2009). Several robotic systems are developed for rescue tasks Wei et al. (2009) Zhang et al. (2009). The research on simulation and training systems for mobile robots is shown in Xuewen et al. (2006). In the field of robotics applied for medical purposes such as surgery the simulation and training environments are developed and described in Schlaefer et al. (2008). The problem of learning via Web is common application used in several cases and as remote experiment system for distance training is discussed in Hong et al. (2007). Virtual labs have been meaningful and very popular in distance education in engineering oriented fields of study, since they allow to perform interesting experiments with the equipment in the labs remotely available through Internet Masar et al. (2004). An advance computer techniques such augmented reality approach applied in training robotics is shown in Kowalski et al. (2008)Bravo & Alberto (2009). The simulation environment used as a testbed for simulation based approach for 17