Virtual Reality Based Teleoperation with Adaptive Autonomy for Remote Shared Control of Mobile Manipulators

Purpose and goal:

The ultimate goals of the project were to increase safety of machine operators, improve working conditions, and provide better environmental performance in mining. Through the demonstration of key abilities of the system to learn operator´s behaviors and adapt robot´s own model, the results support the feasibility of the approach to teleoperate mining equipment from distance using VR-based interface.

The proposed solutions allow to achieve project goals by removing the need for operators to be physically present in the mining environment. Expected results and effects:

The project resulted in two scientific publications, each addressing the corresponding work package of the project. The initial goal of the project to target TRL4 allows to extrapolate results to a large range of application domains and pursue further research at higher TRL. The implemented integration platform based on the digital twin paradigm allowed to implement developed algorithms and demonstrate project results.

Approach and implementation:

The project was structured in the form of two scientific work packages, supported by work packages targeting platform integration and project coordination. The latter also included public outreach activities in the form of presentations and demonstrations. The project goals are fully achieved, the outcomes build an important foundation for a full scale project application.

The initial project duration was altered due to covid restrictions, however, the implementation of a digital twin paradigm in the integration platform allowed complete fulfillment of the goals.