Simplified Human Robot Interaction (HRI) interface for intuitive control of a spherical robot

Abstract:
In many robotic applications is an interaction with a human operator desired or even required to achieve a certain goal. Especially in the field of mobile robotics, when then robot does not know its exact location, the interaction between a human operator and the robot is essential. A variety of different approaches exist to interact with robots, these are summarized under the term Human Robot Interaction (HRI). This work deals with a newly developed remote control concept for mobile robots. The focus lies on an intuitive control with simple gestures to command a spherical robot in its environment. The approach uses a low-cost time-of-flight sensor in combination with the SocioIntelliGenesis simulator (SIGverse)to implement this innovative motion control concept. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is utilized to connect to the robot hardware. A spherical robot is used due its ability to move in any direction in its working environment. This work explains the control software and demonstrates the concept with a lab experiment. In the field of mobile robotics, researchers work with a variety of different locomotion strategies to guarantee stable and efficient navigation. The interaction with human operators is in many applications needed or even desired to guide the robot in unknown or dangerous scenarios. Especially in unstructured and dynamic environments is an interaction with a human operator a key factor to fulfill a given task. Hence, a strong demand to facilitate Human Robot Interaction (HRI) by careful design of the control interfaces is required.