Internet-Based Interaction with Mobile Robots

The human interaction and the robot's autonomy are key functions that can spread the use of the robot in human daily life. The remote interaction is a special type of human-robot interaction, where the human and the robot are separated by physical barriers but linked via telematics technologies (= telecommunication + informatics). Due to the nature of intelligence needed for the modern robots, remote interaction systems must combine the dream of the artificial intelligence field of creating an intelligent being, creature, or program with human-computer interaction's vision of building systems that are centred around the user's needs and desires. This introduces a number of technical challenges, which must be addressed such as local autonomy, control strategy, communication medium constraints, feedback methods and control interfaces. In this book, these considerations are discussed. The book also presents a multi-layer architecture, which can be used to facilitate the remote interaction with mobile robots using different interaction elements for research and educational purposes.