Tele-control of Surveyor SRV-1 robot using Nintendo's Wii Remote Controller

Abstract

Nowadays, robotic control is becoming more and more popular in the world. It is because it has many real and useful applications in our daily life. For instance, we can control a robot to disassemble a bomb remotely, which can lower the risk of sending a living person to do the same task. In fact, it is not uncommon to find news about using robots to solve our daily problems. Further, there are many robot competitions organized to promote students’ interests in this technology aiming to cultivate more young professionals to work in this field. Apart from mobility and functionality, there are two main concerns for a robot’s effective usage in our daily situation. First, it is about the control distance between the operator and the robot. In many situations, the operator may be far away from the robot. Under this situation, the robot should equip with some sensors to allow the operator to actually see through the robot in order to control it. Surveyor SRV-1 Robot is a very compact machine equipped with a build-in camera. In addition, it can also be controlled through a WiFi network, thus it is very suitable for tele-robotic control. Second, it is the man-machine interfacing between the robot and the operator. Nintendo® Wii Remote Controller is a cheap but powerful device specially designed for Nintendo ® Wii play station. It allows users to control and interact with the play station via gesture recognition and pointing through its build-in accelerometer technology. Thus, it offers an effective way to control a robot though gesture motion potentially. In this project, we have developed a system using a Nintendo® Wii Remote Controller to tele-control a Surveyor SRV-1 Robot through global WiFi network. As long as the robot and the operator computer are hooked up with WiFi, the operator is able to control the SRV Robot anywhere in the world.