1 TELEROBOTICS EXPERIMENTS VIA INTERNET Riko Šafarič (IEEE member), Matjaž Debevc (ACM SIGCHI Member), * Rob M. Parkin (IEEE non-member), Suzana Uran (IEEE member) Corresponding Author and his address: Riko Šafarič Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Smetanova 17, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia, Fax: ++386 2 220 7315, Phone: ++386 2 220 7302, E-mail: riko.safaric@uni-mb.si * Mechatronics Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK, Fax: +44 (0)1509 223934, E-mail: r.m.parkin@Lboro.ac.uk Abstract Many enterprises experience difficulty in training people to work with expensive equipment, which is needed for carrying out profitable work tasks (e.g. production line robots). Similar problems are found when work is of a complex and safety critical nature (e.g. nuclear environments, explosive placement, surgery). This paper describes a method of education and training involving off-line usage of Virtual Environments (VR) for task planning. When tasks are developed to the satisfaction of the trainee, they are exported to remote physical hardware, via the Internet, for real world execution. Development of the system and the training experiments is discussed, along with some of the issues raised for telerobotics and solutions to the problem of detecting collisions in the virtual world. The approach has been shown to be viable and increases the education and training possibilities for key workers whilst maintaining a low cost of ownership. The down time of mission critical equipment is minimised whilst the gaining of valuable experience is maximised. Keywords: Telerobotics, Internet, Virtual reality, Visual languages, Collision detection I. INTRODUCTION Training operatives to work with expensive equipment, which is needed for carrying out profitable work tasks (e.g. production line robots) or when the work is of a complex and safety critical nature (e.g. nuclear environments, explosive placement, surgery) has long proved problematical. A method used in some instances is that of immersive telepresence [1], but different approaches are needed for different sectors [2] and equipment is often expensive and does not release high cost capital equipment for production line usage [3]. In all cases, the feedback of rich data from the physical hardware site to the operator site, via Internet or Mobile Communications links is bandwidth limited and contains uncertain delays. An approach that may bear much fruit is to use Virtual Environments for achieving a simulated "hands on" experience only connecting to physical hardware for short periods of time. Engineers can use an animation of robot cell activity to conduct feasibility studies on their manufacturing processes while their product is still being designed. The experiences of companies with robotized production lines show that they may save up to 85 % of downtime when the robot has to be reprogrammed and up to 50 % of programming time [4]. In some cases difficulty may be experienced when transferring to full VR training. This situation may