Robot Interface Using Java Applets

Japanese version is here

Overview

We have designed a robot interface architecture called the Virtual Robot Terminal which uses Java applets. This interface helps users manipulate robots and sensors interactively through standard Web browsers.

Approach to Real-World Objects

The purpose of our research is to implement an interactive and portable user interface system for real-world objects. Our investigation will expand the accessibility to online information resources and the extendability of the system enabling new functions to be added to real-world objects.
To access real-world objects, we employ robots and sensors integrated as online information resources on the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW, widely used by computer networks, has been allowing us to share a lot of online resources very easily. It has also made it possible for us to manipulate robots and sensors that are connected to networking computers. However, conventional manipulation systems on the WWW have been suffered from a poor response speed due to the slow CGI programs.

Virtual Robot Terminal and Its Application

We have designed a robot interface architecture which enables us to manipulate robots and sensors smoothly from standard Web browsers and have also constructed an experimental system based on this architecture.
This experimental system consists of hardware modules such as robots and sensors, daemon programs, and Java applets. These Java applets act as user interfaces for hardware modules on Web browsers. The advantages of using Java applets are the high portability of programs and a high performance.
Diagram of Virtual Robot Terminal
Figure 1: Diagram of Virtual Robot Terminal
The daemon programs act as bridges between hardware modules and the network. In order to improve the communication throughput, it has been found useful to connect the daemons and Java applets directly with each other via TCP/IP sockets. As a result, the users can access the robots and sensors as online information resources interactively. Figure 1 is an overview of our experimental system based on the Virtual Robot Terminal. Figure 2 shows a scene of a user operating a robotic manipulator from a Web browser.
Robot operation from a Web browser
Figure 2: Robot operation from a Web browser

  1. Hiramatsu, K., Mori, A., Naya, F. and Osato, N.: Visualization of Multi-agent Robot Control System with Web Browsers (in Japanese), Proc. of the 55th Annual Convention IPS Japan, Vol.3, pp. 432--433 (1997).
  2. Hiramatsu, K., Mori, A., Naya, F. and Osato, N.: A Robot Interface System with HORB (in Japanese), Proc. of Interaction '98, pp. 31--32 (1998).
Contact: Kaoru Hiramatsu; Email: hiramatu@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp

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