Development of a Seamless Telerobotic System Combining Teleoperation and Autonomous Navigation Using the Robot Service Network Protocol.

With the increase in the elderly population, decline in birth rate, occurrences of natural disaster, and the recent outbreak of the corona virus disaster, drastic changes have been observed in the overall public lifestyle, and the role of robots has been reconsidered. To cope with complicated social problems, several types of robots, including sensors, should be networked and managed through collaborative control systems. In this study, an interface and a graphical user interface (GUI) are developed for ease in system building as well as user operation. The prototype system, namely the telerobotic system, is developed for networking different types of robots and combining different types of control modes, i.e., an autonomous control and a teleoperated control, to a seamless control. The system uses the robot operating system (ROS), robot service network protocol (RSNP), and a common operation GUI. The system is verified through experiments combining autonomous navigation and teleoperation.