Virtual reality tools for Internet robotics

A virtual control environment for robot teleoperation via the Internet is presented. It comprises a Java3D-based real-time virtual representation of the robot and worksite, and uses a graphic panel, an environment for remote robot programming, and a dataglove with a 6D position tracker as the control interfaces. The use of virtual reality (VR) techniques for Internet teleoperation allow: (1) time delays inherent in IP networks to be suppressed and (2) the operator´s work to be simplified and accelerated, compared to methods that use delayed TV images. The system realisation, with its use of open technologies Java, Java3D and 3-tier client/server architecture, provides portability among different computer platforms and types of robots. The efficiency of the VR-based methods developed has been verified for slow communication rates (0.1-0.5 KB/sec), where TV-based control methods are inapplicable. VR systems have been developed for the WWW-based control of the PUMA and CRS industrial robot manipulators. The particulars of these systems, the experiments undertaken, current issues, and directions of future work are presented.