Universal web interfaces for robot control frameworks

Abstract

Abstract-Developers and end-users have to interface robotic systems for control and feedback. Such systems are typically co-engineered with their graphical user interfaces. In the past, a vast community of researchers has addressed issues of generality, deployment, usability, and re-usability of user interfaces. However, the support for creating graphical user interfaces in recent robotic frameworks is limited. In particular, there is typically no support for web-based teleoperation. In this work, we propose a new Java-based editor with a plugin architecture for GUI elements and communication ports. Special focus is laid on platform-independent design, easy extensibility, connectivity to different robotic frameworks, usability and deployment. The tool offers convenient creation of graphical user interfaces and can publish them over the web -making them accessible from any Java-enabled web browser. I. MOTIVATIONDevelopers and operators of technical systems need convenient access to control interfaces and state information. In the case of -but not limited to -mobile robotic systems, this interfacing software is deployed on external networked computers or mobile devices that carry the respective graphical user interface (GUI). Usually, during development a GUI is subject to multiple changes due to ongoing feature integration and debugging. Also, different human operators show different preferences in GUI design. This leads to the demand for editor tools capable of conveniently creating and editing GUIs. If well-designed, the GUI is free of system logic and is a separate component from the system to be controlled. Developers of robotic frameworks have already spent varying amounts of effort to provide such tooling. However, these tools are specifically designed to work with their respective frameworks and have limitations regarding flexibility and deployment. In section I-A, we discuss the capabilities of recent robotic development frameworks regarding these aspects.In this work, we propose a new Java-based GUI tool addressing the following areas:• editor for graphical user interfaces • independence from specific (robotic) applications and frameworks • extensible plugin architecture • web-based GUI deployment • robust handling of fluctuating connection link quality

A Behaviour-based Integration of Fully Autonomous, Semi-autonomous, and Tele-operated Control Modes for an Off-road Robot

“…In the future, the currently used gui shall be replaced by a Java-based application (see Koch et al (2008)). A widget in the Java-gui shall display imagery provided by GoogleEarth R .…”

Using an autonomous robot to maintain privacy in assistive environments

“…For the robot ARTOS, a framework for Java-based web interfaces and a respective editor were developed [18]. This Graphical User Interface (GUI)-layer is independent from the robot's internal control system.…”

Methodology for robot mapping and navigation in assisted living environments

“…Primarily incremental localisation is done based on odometery information which is further refined by reading landmarks in the form of passive RFID-tags integrated in the carpet by an RFID-reader attached to the bottom of the robot. These landmarks are absolute and helps in determining the orientation of the robot [6]. The level of localisation achieved in this way is sufficient to guarantee precise navigation in living environments.…”

“…2 shows an overview of an assisted living apartment which is equipped with sensor and camera systems to locate and monitor an elderly person. In addition to these, passive RFID tags have been integrated in the carpet to monitor the movement of a person wearing shoes capable of reading RFID tags [6]. Despite using different systems for localising and monitoring an elderly person, a small autonomous robot ARTOS ( Fig.…”