A Robot Control and Augmented Reality Interface for Multiple Robots

Augmented reality technology is useful for interaction with robotic devices. A user can see the status of and direct orders to robots in the actual operating environment rather than on a remote computer console. A system is presented where fiducial markers are used for the dual purpose of reading the position of a multi-robot system and for user interaction using augmented reality. A user can observe, with the assistance of a hand-held device or wearable eyepiece display, the planned motion and tasks of the robots. An intuitive interface allows the robots to be retasked dynamically. A scalable system architecture and a prototype is presented.