A networking framework for teleoperation in safety, security, and rescue robotics

Safety, security, and rescue robotics is an important application field that can be viewed as a prototypical example of a domain where networked mobile robots are used for the exploration of unstructured environments that are inaccessible to or dangerous for humans. Teleoperation, based on wireless networks, is much more complex than what one might expect at first glance because it goes well beyond mere mappings of low-level user inputs - like joystick commands - to motor activations on a robot. Teleoperation for SSRR must move up to the behavior and mission levels where a single operator triggers short-time, autonomous behaviors, respectively, and supervises a whole team of autonomously operating robots. Consequently, a significant amount of heterogeneous data - video, maps, goal points, victim data, and so on - must be transmitted between robots and mission control. In this article, a networking framework for teleoperation in SSRR is presented. It was evaluated in a series of field tests and competitions, including the European Land Robot Trials and RoboCup events.