Transforming Basic Robotic Platforms into Easily Deployable and Web Remotely Controllable Robots

Abstract—This paper describes a way to transform basicrobotic platforms into Web remotely controllable robots. Ourgoal is to achieve robot deployment anywhere, at anytime, atlow-cost. As soon as full or even restricted Internet access isavailable (WiFi or 3G), the robot can be deployed and Web-controlled. The distant user can send commands to the robotand monitor the state of the robot. For example, the distant usercan make the robot move and get snapshots taken by the robot. Keywords - Ubiquitous robot, Web control, service robotics.I. INTRODUCTIONIn the past years, we have been working on models forubiquitous systems [1] and one current application is anubiquitous system to enable persons with disabilities (relatedto age or illness) to stay living in their home. In such anapplication there are fix devices and mobile devices. From ourpoint of view, available mobile devices (autonomous robots)are not satisfactory. Some of them are very expensive andsometime not reliable, others are difficult to control. Theautonomy is also a major problem. The aim of this paper is topropose a robot architecture especially designed for this kindof HAL environment (Human Assisted Living Environment).We focus on two main constraints. First, the robot must becheap enough to keep the proposed HAL system accessible tothe users. Second, it must be controllable over the network.The use of network technologies inside robots is nowadaysclassical [2], [3]. A WiFi network can be used and an on-boardWeb server may allow control of the robot from anywhere inthe world. This solution can be easily implemented. It is usedin the commercial Rovio WowWee robot [12]. Unfortunately,it has some disadvantages. First, a moving robot evolves in alimited WiFi area and may get out of control. That is a majorproblem for outdoor robots. Second, a robot including an on-board server cannot use any WiFi router without configuration.This means that deploying a remote controlled robot is not a”plug-and-play” operation.Current 3G coverage is now so wide that it provides almostuniversal Internet access. Unfortunately, 3G networks are notperfect for remote control of robots. Many 3G providers blockall ports except some outgoing ports (HTTP port 80, HTTPSport 443, etc.). This means that an on-board web server cannotwork on a remote controlled robot. This restriction can beovercome by using HTTP tunnelling [7]. A distant serveris used and all communications performed are encapsulatedusing the HTTP protocol. The main problem of this solutionis often the lack of performance due to the overhead ofcommunications in the distant server.In this paper, we propose to use distant servers for only onepurpose: ensuring efficient robot control in a restricted Internetenvironment. We will adapt HTTP tunneling to remote robotcontrol in order to guarantee correct performances and simpleconfiguration. The remote user has no direct access to the robotand sends commands to a distant server which will transmitthem to the robot (Fig. 1). On the other side, the robot cansend its state to the distant server, making it available to theuser (internal state of the robot, snapshots of the environment,etc).The distant server can control several robots which can be invarious locations. The only thing required is the ability of therobot to send HTTP requests to the distant server. Either WiFior restricted 3G networks can be used. Installing a robot atanytime and anywhere in the world is possible as soon as basicInternet access is available (for example, only an outgoing port80).In this paper, we first present a basic robotic platformwhich includes a robot that moves/turns forward or backwardon tracks when powered. It is used with a computer whichhas the ability to control the robotic platform and get anInternet access. We then show how to obtain Web-controland transform it into a communicating robot which can beeasily deployed anywhere. This ubiquitous robot [4], [5], [6]is designed to be integrated in an ubiquitous environment.