Remote Robot Control with Low-cost Robotic Arms and Human Motions

Abstract

Geographically-separated people are now connected by smart devices and networks to enjoy remote human interactions. However, current online interactions are still confined in a virtual space. Extending the pure virtual interactions to the physical world requires multidisciplinary research efforts, including sensing, robot control, networking, and kinematics mapping. This paper introduces a remote motion-controlled robotic arm framework by integrating these techniques, which allows a user to control a far-end robotic arm simply by hand motions. In the meanwhile, the robotic arm follows the user’s hand to perform tasks and sends back its live states to the user in video stream. Furthermore, we explore using cheap robotic arms and off-the-shelf motion capture devices to facilitate the wide use of the platform in people’s daily life. No professional knowledge is required from the user. Moreover, we implement a testbed that connects two US states for the remote control study. We investigate different types of latency that affect the user’s remote control experience and conduct comparative studies. Results show that the current commercial motion capture device, low-cost robotic arms and networks are already available to provide physically-augmented remote human interactions.