Humans being at two places at the same time may soon be analogous to humans flying. Dzmitry Tsetserukou and a team from Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan are working on making telepresence a possibility.
The system they are working on, NAVIgoid, will be unlike any joystick, mouse and keyboard controlled robot you have ever seen. The team has designed a belt with a four flex sensors and a 3-axis accelerometer that detects movements and allows the user to control NAVIgoid intuitively and precisely. The belt can even detect the degree of bend or tilt of the torso to adjust the robots velocity just like a joystick.
One of the team’s main goals was to engage more senses than just vision. The NAVIgoid has two laser range finders (LRF) that scan all 360 degrees of its environment. These LRF’s can detect the shape and the distance of still or moving objects. This information is then relayed to the wearable belt that has 16 vibration motors evenly placed around it. The motors can vary the intensity of vibration to provide high-resolution "vibrotactile" information to the user about the distance, direction, and even the shape of a still or moving obstacle.
This user feed back, along with visuals and sounds from the robot’s cameras and microphones, creates a stereoscopic image, which is wirelessly transferred to the head mounted display.
NAVIgoid currently has no arm or hand-like attachments. Since hands are not needed to control mobility, the team hopes to include apendages in later versions of the robot.
NAVIgoid was displayed at this years Siggraph Asia conference in Hong Kong.
See the latest on robot technology in the element14 Robotics group.
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