Collaborative teleoperation via the Internet

Abstract

We describe a system that allows a distributed group of users to simultaneously teleoperate an industrial robot arm via the Internet. A Java applet at each client streams mouse motion vectors from up to 3D users; a sewer aggregates these inputs to produce a single control stream for the robot. Users receive visual feedback from a digital camera mounted above the robot arm. To our knowledge, this is the first collaboratively controlled robot on the Internet.