ROS Based Wireless Teleoperation System for Robots

ROS (robot operating system) is rapidly becoming the operational framework of choice for all robotic control and navigation applications. Consumer and industrial robots are increasingly being integrated with ROS packages. This paper proposes a wireless controller system for teleoperating any ROS compatible robot platform. The controller is itself a microcontroller-based device with a long-range serial transceiver. The microcontroller of choice is the STM32F103C8 and the transceiver is an HC-12 serial communication module. An identical transceiver module is also utilized at the ROS master's end to establish point to point communication for transmission of serialized ROS messages. The system maintains steady connection without loss of bandwidth. The system also ensures that ROS messages from other nodes can be made available to the controller. The controller can be programmed for direct integration with ROS open-source framework and packages without any requirement for middleware. It is efficient, effective and easy to debug. A controller of this description could potentially be applied in areas requiring real time teleoperation of ROS based robotic systems like manipulators, mobile robots and drones. The system is reliable, fast and upgradable as per the user's requirements.