Camera Placement and Multi-Camera Fusion for Remote Robot Operation

This paper studies the impact of camera location and multi-camera fusion with real robots in an urban search and rescue task through two sets of experiments. In the first, we compared a camera with an overhead view to a traditional forward looking camera. In the second, we compared the use of a single forward looking camera to the use of two cameras, one on the front of the robot and one on the rear. Our experiments show that an overhead view that includes the robot chassis significantly increases the situation awareness of the operator as measured by the number of collisions during a maze traversal. We also found that having two cameras, one forward-facing and one rear-facing, results in improved situation awareness. The addition of the rearfacing camera also eliminates many of the collisions that typically occur in the back of the robot when using a single camera.

[1]  Bruce A. Maxwell,et al.  A Real-Time Vision Module for Interactive Perceptual Agents , 2001, ICVS.

[2]  Donald D. Dudenhoeffer,et al.  Dynamic-Autonomy for Urban Search and Rescue , 2002, AAAI Mobile Robot Competition.

[3]  Mark Micire.  ANALYSIS OF THE ROBOTIC-ASSISTED SEARCH AND RESCUE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER DISASTER , 2002 .

[4]  Robin R. Murphy,et al.  Human-robot interactions during the robot-assisted urban search and rescue response at the World Trade Center , 2003, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part B.

[5]  Bruce A. Maxwell,et al.  A real-time vision module for interactive perceptual agents , 2001, Machine Vision and Applications.

[6]  Jijun Wang,et al.  A game engine based simulation of the NIST urban search and rescue arenas , 2003, Proceedings of the 2003 Winter Simulation Conference, 2003..

[7]  Michael Lewis,et al.  Camera control and decoupled motion for teleoperation , 2003, SMC'03 Conference Proceedings. 2003 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics. Conference Theme - System Security and Assurance (Cat. No.03CH37483).

[8]  Holly A. Yanco,et al.  Improved interfaces for human-robot interaction in urban search and rescue , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583).

[9]  Michael Lewis,et al.  Gravity-Referenced Attitude Display for Teleoperation of Mobile Robots , 2004 .

[10]  Jean Scholtz,et al.  Design guidelines for improved human-robot interaction , 2004, CHI EA '04.

[11]  Jean Scholtz,et al.  Evaluation of human-robot interaction awareness in search and rescue , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[12]  Holly A. Yanco,et al.  "Where am I?" Acquiring situation awareness using a remote robot platform , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583).

[13]  Jean Scholtz,et al.  Beyond usability evaluation: analysis of human-robot interaction at a major robotics competition , 2004 .

[14]  Adam Jacoff,et al.  RoboCup 2004 Competitions and Symposium: A Small Kick for Robots, a Giant Score for Science , 2005, AI Mag..

[15]  Jean Scholtz,et al.  A field study of two techniques for situation awareness for robot navigation in urban search and rescue , 2005, ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2005..

[16]  David Woods,et al.  Overcoming the Keyhole in Human-Robot Coordination: Simulation and Evaluation , 2005 .