A Minimalist Telerobotic Installation on the Internet

Abstract

As a feasibility study for simple, fast, reliable, relocatable telerobotic systems on the Internet, we describe an interactive online lightbox system. It is accessible to anyone with a graphical browser and provides a minimalist example of interactivity. The project uses motors and light switches and returns live images resulting from user specified combinations of devices: http://www.dislocation.net/ 1 Introduction For the first time in history, telerobotics is now widely accessible to nonspecialists via the Net[1]. Web cameras are the most common devices, claiming to provide live remote images. Some websites use the mouse/imagemap protocol to permit remote viewers to direct the gaze via computer controlled pan/tilt mechanisms. Robotic devices provide a further level of interactivity by allowing participants to manipulate the remote environment which may include a model railroad, paintbrush, sculpture or garden. Our goal was to create a simple, fast, reliable, relocatable telerobo...