MAVI: A Research Platform for Telepresence and Teleoperation
This work addresses the problem of enabling remote daily tasks through telepresence for researchers and educators, but it is incremental as it builds on existing robotic platforms and ROS frameworks.
The researchers tackled the need for a robust mobile robotic platform for telepresence by designing MAVI, a low-cost, modular system with 360-degree stereoscopic vision and semi-autonomous telemanipulation capabilities, resulting in a platform that balances modularity, accessibility, and cost while being open-source.
One of the goals in telepresence is to be able to perform daily tasks remotely. A key requirement for this is a robust and reliable mobile robotic platform. Ideally, such a platform should support 360-degree stereoscopic vision and semi-autonomous telemanipulation ability. In this technical report, we present our latest work on designing the telepresence mobile robot platform called MAVI. MAVI is a low-cost and robust but extendable platform for research and educational purpose, especially for machine vision and human interaction in telepresence setups. The MAVI platform offers a balance between modularity, capabilities, accessibility, cost and an open source software framework. With a range of different sensors such as Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), 360-degree laser rangefinder, ultrasonic proximity sensors, and force sensors along with smart actuation in omnidirectional holonomic locomotion, high load cylindrical manipulator, and actuated stereoscopic Pan-Tilt-Roll Unit (PTRU), not only MAVI can provide the basic feedbacks from its surroundings, but also can interact within the remote environment in multiple ways. The software architecture of MAVI is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) which allows for the easy integration of the state-of-the-art software packages.