Delayed telop aid
First Claim
1. A method for the teleoperation of robots, stored and executed by a computer platform, comprising the steps of:
- predicting robot motion from an operator'"'"'s queued commands to an Operator Control Unit (OCU);
creating synthetic images to produce a video feed that looks as if the robot communication link had no delay and no reduced bandwidth;
controlling the robot'"'"'s movement using closed loop; and
displaying the synthetic image to an operatorcreating a 3D model of the environment;
accurately controlling the vehicle to the predicted pose;
providing an OpenGL based image reconstruction algorithm;
providing a command interface to the robot for receiving distance and yaw input commands;
dividing the required image processing between the vehicle and the OCU, taking into consideration the video quality and computational assets available;
wherein the algorithm is chosen from one of the following for the group comprising;
SIFT;
a SURF feature for detection and tracking;
Lucas-Kanade method;
combined SURF feature tracking with Delaunay mesh generation;
Kalman filtering techniques; and
thin plate spline interpolation and curve fitting for synthetic image reconstruction;
extracting SURF features for every frame;
projecting SURF features from the image into the world frame using navigation data and our fish-eye camera model;
performing ray intersection checks in 3D to determine if the ray originating at the camera location goes through the feature location in world frame;
comparing each feature in the last frame is with every feature in the current frame;
if the rays are close enough, a 3D location for that feature is computed;
comparing the similarity of the SURF descriptors of the features in question, to each other, to increase the tracking accuracy; and
if both conditions are satisfied, the track is considered good and added as a node to be used during an image reconstruction phase.
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Abstract
The proposed system, Delayed Telop Aid (DTA), improves the teleoperator'"'"'s ability to control the vehicle in a three step process. First, DTA predicts robot motion given the operators commands. Second, DTA creates synthetic images to produce a video feed that looks as if the robot communication link had no delay and no reduced bandwidth. Finally, DTA performs closed loop control on the robot platform to ensure that the robot follows the operator'"'"'s commands. A closed loop control of the platform makes sure that the predicted pose after the delay (and therefore the image presented to the operator) is achieved by the platform. This abstracts away the latency-sensitive parts of the robot control, making the robot'"'"'s behavior stable in the presence of poorly characterized latency between the operator and the vehicle.
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Citations
15 Claims
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1. A method for the teleoperation of robots, stored and executed by a computer platform, comprising the steps of:
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predicting robot motion from an operator'"'"'s queued commands to an Operator Control Unit (OCU); creating synthetic images to produce a video feed that looks as if the robot communication link had no delay and no reduced bandwidth; controlling the robot'"'"'s movement using closed loop; and displaying the synthetic image to an operator creating a 3D model of the environment; accurately controlling the vehicle to the predicted pose; providing an OpenGL based image reconstruction algorithm; providing a command interface to the robot for receiving distance and yaw input commands; dividing the required image processing between the vehicle and the OCU, taking into consideration the video quality and computational assets available; wherein the algorithm is chosen from one of the following for the group comprising; SIFT; a SURF feature for detection and tracking; Lucas-Kanade method; combined SURF feature tracking with Delaunay mesh generation; Kalman filtering techniques; and thin plate spline interpolation and curve fitting for synthetic image reconstruction; extracting SURF features for every frame; projecting SURF features from the image into the world frame using navigation data and our fish-eye camera model; performing ray intersection checks in 3D to determine if the ray originating at the camera location goes through the feature location in world frame; comparing each feature in the last frame is with every feature in the current frame; if the rays are close enough, a 3D location for that feature is computed; comparing the similarity of the SURF descriptors of the features in question, to each other, to increase the tracking accuracy; and if both conditions are satisfied, the track is considered good and added as a node to be used during an image reconstruction phase. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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14. A method for the teleoperation of robots, stored and executed by a computer platform, comprising the steps of:
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predicting robot motion given a operator'"'"'s commands; creating synthetic images to produce a video feed that looks as if the robot communication link had no delay and no reduced bandwidth; controlling the robot'"'"'s movement using closed loop; sending the robot desired odometer and yaw commands from a joystick; taking the last video frame received from the robot and texture mapping it on a flat surface; using the predicted pose of the robot, computed using the commands sent to the robot from an Operator Control Unit (OCU); using orthographic projection; displaying the synthetic image to the operator; the odometer and yaw commands sent to the robot using the joystick are queued up in the OCU along with a timestamp; an image reconstruction module has direct access to this queue of commands and uses the commands right away to provide instant feedback to the operator by creating predicted synthetic frames based on those commands and the last video frame/vehicle status received from the robot; the video frames and vehicle status messages received from the robot are also queued up in the OCU; in order to simulate latency, the camera frames are sent to the image reconstruction module after a predefined time interval has passed from the time they are taken; this delay threshold is configurable to simulate different latencies; when the image reconstruction module receives a new frame, the corresponding vehicle status message is found by matching the frame id stored in the vehicle status message; and this correction in pose is used when the inventors generate the next synthetic image for the operator. - View Dependent Claims (15)
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Specification