Abstract / Description

The problem of remote controlling a mobile robot through the Internet with its associated bandwidth constraints is tackled in this paper. Our solution uses a Kinect camera coupled with a compression algorithm to stream a forward facing 3D range image to a remote operator who uses it to drive a mobile robot. The efficiency of the compression and streaming approaches in providing operator feedback over a very low bandwidth connection was demonstrated by being able to operate the robot in Sydney from a laptop in Germany. Experiments showed that driving ability was similar to that obtained using a compressed video feed, although the bandwidth required for the compressed Kinect data was reduced by a factor of 10.