1999 Reports

Pararover: A Remote Controlled Vehicle with Omnidirectional Sensors

Lok, Simon; Nayar, Shree K.

The process of teleoperation can be described as allowing a remote user to control a vehicle by interpretting sensor information captured by the vehicle. One method that is frequently used to implement teleoperation is to provide the user with a real-time video display of a perspective camera mounted on the vehicle. This method limits the remote user to seeing the environment in which is vehicle is present through the fixed viewpoint with which the camera is mounted. Having a fixed viewpoint is extremely limiting and significantly impedes the ability of the remote user to properly navigate. One way to address this problem is to mount the perspective camera on a pan-tilt device. This is rarely done because it is expensive and introduces a significant increase in implementation complexity from both the mechanical and electrical point of view. With the advent of omnidirectional camera technology, there is now a second more attractive alternative. This paper describes the \rover, a remote controlled vehicle constructed in the summer of 1998 to demonstrate the use of omnidirectional camera technology and a virtual reality display for vehicular teleoperation, audio-video surveillance and forward reconnaissance.