Embedding remote control functionalities into a robotic physics laboratory

John Fragakis, Spyros Kopsidas, Matina Tsavli, Dimitris Zisiadis, Dionisis Vavougios and Leandros Tassiulas
University of Thessaly
Volos, Greece

Recently, information and communication technologies (ICT), along with robotics, have played an increasingly significant role in education, especially in the area of experimental physics. The exceptional convenience they gradually began to offer proved to be very useful in helping students/users to perform a large number of different experiments, observe the results, draw important conclusions and, finally, grasp the fundamental principles and concepts of physics or other relevant sciences. Laboratories with robotic equipment that can be controlled by a user through a wide range of devices -- such as joysticks, touch pads and pressure/touch sensors -- have been established in schools and educational units all over the world. In most cases, robotic arms and arrays allow users to execute precise 3-D movements which are ideal for performing experiments in mechanics or on electric circuits. That robotic equipment is usually combined with subsidiary communication and computer systems to achieve the most detailed recording of an experiment’s results or provide remote user control functionalities.

In this paper, we present the user interface and the system architecture of a network-aware robotic laboratory specifically developed for supporting physics experiments, which allows teachers and students to control a robotic arm remotely. The challenge has been to demonstrate that remote control, along with a high accuracy multimedia user interface, is very suitable for the design of a remote laboratory. The user interface has been designed by using techniques based on augmented reality and non-immersive virtual reality, which enhance the way operators get/put information from/to the robotic scenario. Moreover, the user interface provides the possibility of letting the operator manipulate the remote environment by using multiple ways of interacting. Finally, we integrated a high-level robot programming language, specially designed for the preparation and execution of physics experiments, along with a profile database system that stores and retrieves a set of data for each user of the system. This paper covers the following four areas: the basic ideas and background of the tele-controlled system; the implementation details and analysis of the core architectural elements of the system; user interface and the subsystems integration; and a summary and discussion of the work that still has to be done to make the system completely operational.