A SLAM based teleoperation and interface system for indoor environment reconnaissance in rescue activities

It is important and necessary to develop a teleoperated mobile robot to have reconnaissance operation inside of the extreme earthquake stricken building or underground town. The present authors aim at developing such a teleoperated mobile robot. In this paper, a prototype of the teleoperation and man-robot interface system is proposed. The tele-operated robot and the remote operation station is linked with wireless network and the operator can command the robot. One feature point of this system is to provide a live omni-directional panoramic view image and live map to the operator on the display of the remote operation station. The live map represents the floor plan of the moving environment and it is provided by SLAM technology with LRF scan data. It proves very effective to have combined use of the panoramic image and the live map. Experimental set up and integrated experiments are also reported in this paper.