A Hybrid Autonomous / Teleoperated Strategy for Reliable Mobile Robot Outdoor Navigation

This paper demonstrates a reliable navigation strategy of a mobile robot teleoperated in outdoor environment. The navigation system for the teleoperated mobile robot consists of a mobile robot and a control station. The mobile robot sends the image data from a camera to the control station. The control station receives and displays the image data and the teleoperator commands the mobile robot based on the image data. Since the image data does not contain enough data for reliable teleoperation, a hybrid autonomous/teleoperated strategy for reliable mobile robot in outdoor environment is suggested. When the mobile robot is faced with unexpected obstacles or the situation that, if it follows the command, it can happen to collide, it sends a warning message to the teleoperator and changes the mode from teleoperated to autonomous to avoid the obstacles by itself. After avoiding the obstacles or the collision situation, the mode of the mobile robot is returned to teleoperated mode. And also, we fuse differential GPS and odometry data using the framework of extended Kalman filter to localize the mobile robot. We have been able to confirm that the appropriate change of navigation mode can help the teleoperator perform reliable navigation in outdoor environment through experiments in the roadway