Real-Time Control Interface for Research and Development Using Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Mobile Robotics and UAVs
Christian Coletti, Kyle Williams · 2024
Research and development into mobile robotics typically requires the integration of the robotic system with off-board components (e.g. motion capture systems or groundstations). Use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) systems such as remote control (RC) vehicles, transmitters, and receivers is attractive due to the components' maturity, reliability, and cost-effectiveness but is generally not feasible to implement due to closed-source embedded electronics and signal protocols. This paper describes a method to interface with COTS components in real-time by sending commands to mobile robotic platforms. Commands are wirelessly streamed to a microcontroller, which converts these commands to a Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) signal. This protocol is accepted in the standard training port of commercial transmitters, establishing control of the robot or vehicle with no modification to COTS systems. This method has been flight-tested on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and proves to be (i) quick to deploy, (ii) sufficiently low-latency for most robotic platforms including agile UAVs, (iii) easily extensible to multi-agent control, and (iv) conducive to using off-board compute, such as when using neural-network-in-the-loop (NNIL) controllers. Integration with motion capture systems may reduce cost and remove barriers of entry in the design, development, and test of robotic systems and controllers.