The main goal of the project was to allow users to see what is happening in remote
“Everything that is recorded by our robot’s cameracan be transferred directly to the user's smartphone, which can also be placed in a virtual headset. This allows users to view the environment in virtual reality as if they were actually moving through it, Mani Babu Gorantla and Grandhi Sathya Venkata Krishna, the two researchers who created the robot, explained to TechXplore. “The effect of presence is created by the robot’s on-board camera, which moves in accordance with the movements of the user’s head.”
Researchers initially controlledthe robot's movements and broadcast videos captured by its camera using an Arduino microcontroller and a Raspberry Pi minicomputer without a screen. They wanted to make sure that the movements of the robot matched the movements of the user's head. To do this, they used accelerometers and gyroscopes (sensors that determine the position and orientation of an object) - key components of most existing devices.
A virtual telepresence robot created by researchers.
Essentially, the data collected by accelerometers andgyroscopes in the user's smartphone are used to detect his head movements. These are transferred to the Raspberry Pi device and then used to control the movements of the robot's camera to make sure they match the user's head position.
Although the first prototype of the robot was built withusing a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino, the researchers subsequently replaced those two with the more complex MyRIO device. MyRIO is a portable device that serves as both a data processor and controller. Thus, it combines the capabilities of the Raspberry Pi and Arduino devices.
Although scientists do not plan to commercializethe robot they created, their work can serve as inspiration for other research groups. Ultimately, this will lead to the development of similar virtual telepresence robots anywhere in the world. In the future, they can be used to monitor secluded or dangerous places at a distance (for example, to search for survivors during an earthquake or other natural disasters), for virtual viewing of a home or office environment while on vacation, and much more.
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Accelerometer - a device that measures projectionapparent acceleration (the difference between the object's true acceleration and gravitational acceleration). As a rule, an accelerometer is a sensitive mass fixed in an elastic suspension.
A gyroscope is a device capable of responding to changes in the orientation angles of the body on which it is installed relative to the inertial reference system. The simplest example of a gyroscope is a spinning top.