IJCAS

Currently, the application of mobile ground robots spans a range of fields from surveillance, search and rescue, exploration, agriculture, military among others. In unstructured and dangerous environments such as disaster scene, military fields or chemical spray in agricultural farms, the experience and intelligence of the operator are necessary for making complex decisions beyond the autonomy of the robot. In such cases, teleoperation allow the operator to guide the robot in achieving complex task from a safe location. The effectiveness with which the operator controls the robot depends on, among others, operator’s awareness of the robot’s environment, the quality of communication link, the robustness of robot’s control system and experience of the human operator. Ground mobile robots form the basis of this work since they are applicable in many fields and mostly operate in dynamic environments that require additional guidance from a human operator. This study reviews research work on mobile robot teleoperation systems, and puts more emphasis on the architecture, communication link and situation awareness creation. Moreover, future trend in mobile robot teleoperation is also put forward in this review to give ground for new research work in this field. Based on the sited literature, it is noted that making the operator feel present in the robot’s environment through sufficient visual and force feedback as well as use of good quality network, significantly improve the navigation efficiency and task achievement of mobile ground robots.

Keywords: Human-robot interaction, mobile ground robot, semi-autonomous robot, situation awareness, teleoperation, teleoperation architecture.