APPLICATION OF LOW-COST COMMERCIAL OFF-THE-SHELF (COTS) PRODUCTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTIONS Ottar L. Osen Helge T. Kristiansen Webjørn Rekdalsbakken Department of Information and Communication Technology Aalesund University College N-6025 Aalesund, Norway E-mail: oo@hials.no KEYWORDS Human-robot interaction, game technology, cell phone interface, Wii Remote, iPhone. ABSTRACT In the effort of developing sensible ways for interaction between humans and automated equipment the use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products is shown to be fruitful in the learning process. The development in the field of consumer electronics has lead to increasingly more elaborate facilities for interaction with the human user. Modern cell phones and game technology are typical representatives of this trend. In this work such equipment has been explored in the aim to achieve easy and natural interfaces between humans and INTRODUCTION This document presents a work on human-robot interaction and communication performed at Aalesund University College (AUC) among lecturers and students at the Bachelor of engineering program in Cybernetics. The work is integrated in the main topics of the program. A central part of this education is represented by a broad use of student projects in close cooperation with the scientific staff. The students get the means and support to investigate commercially available electronics and computer equipment related to automatic systems and autonomous devices. AUC is situated in one of Norway’s most vital industrial areas with a strong cluster of ship builders, and a variety of producers of all kinds of ship equipment. This situation has resulted in a strong collaboration between AUC and many of these companies. This cooperation has given offspring to many new products for use onboard ships, examples of which are 3DOF and 6DOF motion stabilized platforms, heave-compensated winches, and remotely controlled tracking systems for light sources and cameras. Two of the companies with which AUC has the closest contact, are Rolls Royce Marine Dept. Inc. (RR) and Offshore Simulation Center AS (OSC). These two companies maintain an extensive activity in the development of ship simulators for a variety of purposes, including high-speed craft simulators, and simulators for anchor handling and crane and winch operations. OSC is today an international supplier of the most modern simulators. In this development AUC has played an important role both in mathematical modeling and in program construction (Rekdalsbakken 2006) (Rekdalsbakken 2007). An important aspect of such simulators is of course the human interface. It has to be as realistic as possible, and at the same time not too expensive. This is the background for the current work on exploring COTS products as part of the human interface towards the advanced operating equipment onboard ships (Rekdalsbakken and Osen 2009). The two main products explored in this context are the Wii Remote controller from Nintendo and the iPhone from Apple. The experiments have been performed on small- scale models of remotely controlled vehicles and include a total communication chain from the human operator to sensors and actuators installed on the vehicles. It is the intention that these experiments shall give insight into new developments in the field of human-robot interactions, which may lead to the integration of said technologies into products that are used in real user interfaces onboard ships. INTERFACES The Wii Remote Controller The Wii Remote controller from Nintendo (2010) was developed to give the player a new dimension of interactivity with games. It may be said that it has revolutionized the human feeling of being part of the game context. The Wii Remote interface consists of several parts; a 3-axis accelerometer, an infrared camera, vibration function, and several buttons for input signals. It communicates over a wireless connection using the Bluetooth (Bluetooth 2010) protocol. The Wii Remote is perhaps the best example of gadget that has become a universal control tool with a wide range of applications. Proceedings 24th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation ©ECMS Andrzej Bargiela, Sayed Azam Ali David Crowley, Eugène J.H. Kerckhoffs (Editors) ISBN: 978-0-9564944-0-5 / ISBN: 978-0-9564944-1-2 (CD)