A Remote Robotics Laboratory on the Internet

Y. U. Cao, T.-W. Chen, M. D. Harris, A. B. Kahng, M. A. Lewis and A. D. Stechert

Commotion Laboratory
UCLA CS Dept., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1596

Abstract:

This paper describes ongoing work toward a remote robotics research site which allows repeatable remote experimentation on multiple mobile robots. Our system consists of ten small mobile robots hosting on-board Unix workstations. The robots provide facilities for sensing and moving obstacles, inter-robot positioning and communications, and user input. The Unix workstations allow the user to control the robots using common languages in a familiar environment, while also providing an interface to mass-market peripherals (secondary storage and vision), network access (telnet, FTP, mail, and HTTP), and robust multi-tasking. We believe that this work provides a foundation for future efforts toward new paradigms for remote research and user interaction with taskable hardware (e.g., colonies of application-specific robots). We envision applications in such domains as agriculture, environmental monitoring, and deep-space exploration.

Yu Uny Cao
Fri May 12 16:04:55 PDT 1995