Mobile Robot Group System Controlled by a Human

In this study we propose an operation method to easily control mobile robot groups by a single human user and build a system in which the human user and robots achieve tasks cooperatively. The user follows the global situation of the system and gives the robots rough movement orders. Robots will move with more precision. In order to control multiple mobile robots, we do research regarding the command and monitoring aspects. Regarding command, user orders are divided in 4 levels related to robotic languages and consider the relationship between orders and the necessary autonomy of the robots in the system. The main features of our method are as follows: (1) the human user commands not each robot individually, but groups of robots, and (2) the autonomy of our system is related to the levels of user commands, and complements lack of commands for the groups (sometimes group commands are not enough to control each robot in the group). Regarding monitoring, we introduce a CCD camera system into our system and display information on a CRT display, which shows the image of work area (see Fig. 1). The user can monitor a remote environment and simultaneously obtain information to be needed during operation (see Fig.2). We verified the efficiency of our method and system by means of assembling experiments (see Fig 3).

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Fig. 3 Assembling Experiment