Abstract:

The "Baxter" robot is a robot that has many different applications including the education, research, industrial tasks, etc. Its height is more than 1.8m and he weighs 138kg - along with its stand. The robot has two hands, each with a gripper and a built-in camera. With them it can perform pick & place operations, recognition of different objects (he can recognize their shape, color and so on), which then sorts. It has sensors that allow it to detect when it’s made contact with a person, so it can stop and also they give the robot the ability to adapt to its environment. Based on the data from the sensors, the robot can sense potential collision events early and can reduce the force before the impact. This is due to a motor driving a spring which drives Baxter's arms instead of just a driving its arms motor. Another feature that distinguishes Baxter from other robots is that instead of writing complicated code, users can grab the robot’s arms and physically guide them through the required motions – this way the robot can even fold clothes. Its face is a flat screen that can express “feelings”. This also makes it able to participate in studies about human-robot interaction (HRI).
The robot has a built-in operating system - the Robotic Operation System (ROS). It is used for the communication with the robot via an Ethernet connection. It allows to access robot’s motors in order to create various specific movements, reading robot’s sensors data (in particular the sonar) - to avoid unintentional contact with a person, processing camera’s data – for performing facial and object recognition and others. The connection to ROS is done through a dedicated Linux station responsible for communication with the robot – on the station is written the code that is sent for execution to the robot. The primary programming language used to write the code is Python. However, the need for a permanent connection with the station, as well as large robot sizes, creates many limitations – the robot cannot easily be moved for demonstration and training purposes, it does not work with Windows or Android devices and much more.
The objective of the paper is to present a developed software to solve these problems. Thus, it's possible to control the robot through the Windows operating system, albeit with a limited number of commands and necessary LAN connectivity. The paper describes the methodology for tests and adjustments made to the system so that the robot can be controlled by any device connected to the internet. The paper is organized as follows. After the introduction, the created specialized website is described in details. The next section presents the robot and devices used for the system's additional tests. The experiments themselves are described in a special section devoted to the testing. As a conclusion it is worth to point out that the test results show that they are successful - the Baxter robot is successfully controlled by Android and Windows devices as well as all those connected to the Internet. In the last section concerning the future development, the possible improvements of the system are presented as well.

Keywords:

“Baxter” robot, Control, Webpage, Python, Rubi, Linux, Windows, Android.