Web Based Remote Active Presence

Abstract

This paper describes the work-in-progress of a client-server system to control a moving robot over the World Wide Web. The robot is representing the person that controls it in the remote environment. Visual and acoustic information about the remote site is transmitted to the user who is capable of controlling the movement of the machine. The robot platform is interfaced to the computer using simple microcontroller circuits. A Web server is used to provide the client application to the operator. Since the decision was made, that Java2 would be the only target implementation language both client and server are platform independent. The engineering objective is to perform robust real time manual control over the Internet connection characterized by varying bandwidth and latency. Although the presented system is completely different from full size professional robots, the problems encountered by senior students designing it are similar to ones faced by design engineers at NASA who prepare full sized vehicles for their trip to Mars.