INVESTIGATOR UNMANNED GROUND VEHICLE WITH NATURAL HUMAN INTERFACE FOR SURVEILLANCE AND RECONNAISSANCE
Kevin French · 2015
InvestiGator is a two wheel drive surveillance and reconnaissance unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that can continually run for upwards of twelve hours. After twelve hours the robots power supply can be hot swapped so that there is never any down time. The InvestiGator is controlled via a natural human interface over a Wi-Fi network. A Leap Motion is used to implement the natural human interface by tracking the user’s hand. There are two modes of operation direct remote control and waypoint navigation. Direct remote control allows the user to directly control the motion of the UGV. Waypoint navigation allows the user to place waypoints in a virtual environment. The robot will then move to the corresponding location of the waypoint in the real world. To generate the virtual environment a Microsoft Kinect is used in conjunction with a visualization software known as RVIZ. The Kinect provides 4 possible modalities to view the world in, giving the user large amounts of information about the current situation even in complete darkness.