PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

A key issue for interactive robots is smooth and natural motion. When robots are tele-operated, e.g. for tele­ presence or during "Wizard of Oz" style studies, this requires an intuitive and responsive control interface. Furthermore, this interface should not interfere with perceiving the robot's sensors. In this work we will present a system that allows a human operator to control an anthropomorphic robotic head by wearing a combined motion capture and display helmet. It allows the direct and live transfer of human facial expressions, gaze and head movements to a humanoid robotic head, and at the same time displays the scene as perceived by the robot's vision sensors. Beside direct control, the system can also record human motion datasets for analysis or later playback. Furthermore, the presented system is cost-effective, and relies to a large extent on commercially available off-the-shelf products. The remaining parts and software are made freely available for research use.