A novel platform for internet-based mobile robot systems

In this paper, we introduce a software and hardware structure for on-line mobile robotic systems. The hardware mainly consists of a Multi-Sensor Smart Robot connected to the Internet through 3G mobile network. The system employs a client-server software architecture in which the exchanged data between the client and the server is transmitted through different transport protocols. Autonomous mechanisms such as obstacle avoidance and safe-point achievement are implemented to ensure the robot safety. This architecture is put into operation on the real Internet and the preliminary result is promising. By adopting this structure, it will be very easy to construct an experimental platform for the research on diverse tele-operation topics such as remote control algorithms, interface designs, network protocols and applications etc.