Teleoperating Robots

Justin Wright

CS 4331-02

Developed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Components

• Oculus Rift/HTC Vive
• Multiple Sensor Displays
• Baxter humanoid robot from Rethink Robotics

• Remote operation of manufacturing equipment
• "By teleoperating robots from home, blue-collar workers would be able to tele-commute..." - CSAIL postdoc Jeffrey Lipton

Applications

Direct Model

• User's vision is directly coupled to the robot's state
• Delayed signal could lead to nausea and headaches
• User’s viewpoint is limited to one perspective

Cyber-Physical Model

• User is separate from the robot
• The user interacts with a virtual copy of the robot and the environment
• Requires much more data, and specialized spaces

Teleoperation Design

How it Works

• Provides a sense of co-location by mapping human’s space into the virtual space, and the virtual space is then mapped into the robot space
• Takes the 2-D images that are displayed to each eye instead of extracting 2-D information from each camera, building out a full 3-D model of the environment, and then processing and redisplay the data

Cool Features

• Allows user to feel like they are "inside the robot's head"
• Robotic performance with a human touch
• "Gameifying" manufacturing processes
• Ability to perform precise actions
• Works from hundreds of miles away

Strengths

• Better performance than competition (grasping 95% more of the time than competition, 57% faster at task completion)
• Scalable and extendable with proper environment
• Breaking ground in new teleoperation approach

Weaknesses

• Early stages
• Costly to implement
• Cumbersome due to sensor data

Sickness

3-4

Low degree of simulator sickness

Related Products

• General manufacturing, machinery meant for predefined tasks
• Robotic arm operation assistance, small skill-set prone to malfunction

• Potential expansion to any manual task
• Look forward to further progress and development
• Particularly interested in seeing where the new approach leads(first person view, combination of direct and cyber-physical model)

References

• http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-csail-new-system-teleoperating-robots-virtual-reality-1009
• https://thenewstack.io/human-workers-can-control-robots-virtual-reality-home/
• https://inhabitat.com/baxter-the-humanoid-robot-promises-to-revive-us-manufacturing/
• https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/review/wearable-tech/htc-vive-vs-oculus-rift-comparison-review-2016-3641088/

Questions?