IF YOU see a soldier in action waving a Nintendo Wii remote-control unit with one hand and holding an Apple iPhone in the other, don't assume they're slacking off. Soldiers may soon be using such devices to interact with their robotic assistants.
The "Wiimote" control system allows game players to direct on-screen action using a wireless wand that detects acceleration in three dimensions. It has already found some unexpected uses, such as manipulating ultrasound images and monitoring movement deficiencies in people with Parkinson's disease (New Scientist, 16 February, p 26). Now David Bruemmer and Douglas Few, both engineers at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Lab in Idaho Falls, have modified a military robot so that it can be controlled by the Wiimote.
Packbot, made by iRobot in Burlington, Massachusetts, disposes of bombs, sniffs out explosives and checks for landmines for US soldiers. It is 70 centimetres long, and moves on wheels or tracks. Some even have machine guns attached, although these are yet to be used in battle (see "Make robots, not war").
Packbot is capable of some autonomous tasks, but is usually remote-controlled by a "joypad" similar to the controller used with most video games consoles, or a traditional joystick. The joypad consists of two groups of thumb-activated buttons, one for steering and the other for speed control. The problem with the joypad is that it takes a lot of concentration and can monopolise the attention of the soldier using it. Any information the robot gathers is beamed back and presented on a laptop display, but the soldier can be so occupied with the robot's controls that they can easily miss this, says Bruemmer. "Our tests show 90 per cent of the operator's workload goes into driving the robot rather than keeping an eye on the sensor data."
The Wiimote is far more intuitive because movements of the hand directly translate into movements of the robot. Bruemmer says it should allow soldiers to control the robots more instinctively, freeing them up to pay closer attention to the incoming sensor data. "It's awesome," Few says, although they have yet to ask the soldiers themselves what they think. Bruemmer and Few have also written software that sends a signal to the Wiimote when the robot has detected something of special interest - somebody trapped in a building, say - activating the Wiimote's built-in vibration feedback.
"Using the Wiimote to control various aspects of the robot makes a lot of sense," says Colin Angle of iRobot.
The pair also plan to harness the iPhone for military use. As an alternative to lugging a laptop around, Few and Bruemmer plan to modify the Packbot to transmit footage compatible with the palm-sized iPhone. Its touch screen should also allow soldiers to manipulate the video captured by the robot more intuitively.
The team will also be adding Wiimote control to the military Talon robots, made by Foster-Miller of Waltham, Massachusetts, but it could be applied to other types. "When trying to envision controlling a future domestic robot, I don't picture sitting down to my PC to instruct it to fetch me something," says Bruemmer.
New Scientist Tech
