Robot Droid - Controlling Nao Robot remotely

Abstract

NAO Robot is a fully programmable humanoid robot dedicated for educational use. In this project, the main focus is to control the robot to perform different tasks by using an Android mobile device such as mobile phone and tablet. Therefore, an android application called RobotDroid is developed to remote the NAO Robot and make it detaching from the Computer. RobotDroid connects NAO robots via Wi-Fi technology that is more stable than the traditional wired LAN cable method. With Wireless connection, the app is able to connect several robots at the same time to perform different tasks. Besides, robot synchronization problem is solved well so that all robots can be controlled by a single device without delay problem. After that, the application provides three featured functions to manipulate the NAO robot. First of all, the application can stream live video from NAO’s camera to the mobile phone, therefore, the robot can be used as a moving and tracking camera in their home for surveillance use. Secondly, the application act as a remote controller to give some basic movement instructions such as moving and making left/right punch. Finally, the application provides action learning function which users can teach the robot to perform certain actions. These taught actions could be saved to the controller and recalled when necessary. Finally, with new android developing platform, I see different possibilities that NAO robot can do. I hope my project can inspire other people to develop more interesting functions on the NAO robots.