Tele-robot with shared autonomy: Distributed navigation development framework

This paper extensively describes the operability of an advanced demonstration platform incorporating reflexive tele-operated control concepts developed on a mobile robot system. By operability, the creation of an opportunity to develop, simulate, tune and test in real-world environment, mobile robot navigation algorithms is meant. During testing in semi-structured environments, the use of an inertial tracker in combination with a head mounted display, improves significantly the situational awareness of the operator, creating a certain feeling of presence at the remote site. Both on hardware as well as on software level, system components have been elaborated to form a modular whole. In order to offer the opportunity to researchers/students for distance development of complex algorithms, emphasis is laid on communication between robot and operator, as well as communication between different system components, resulting in a distributed framework. The name of the framework is CoRoBA, which stands for Controlling Robots with CORBA, a standardized and popular middleware.