A common wireless remote control system for mobile robots in laboratory

A common wireless remote control system based on standard APIs of robots is presented to enable a stable multi-robot transportation in distributed life science laboratories. This system consists of multi-robot board control centers (PCs), a remote server control center (PC), a wireless communication network and an infrared radio navigation module with ceiling passive landmarks. To let this system expand conveniently, the two-level Client/Server architecture is adopted, and a standard IEEE 802.11g wireless communication with TCP/IP protocol is utilized. An inside architecture is employed for signal sampling and controlling between robot board PCs and the robot's hardware modules. An additional outside architecture is designed for higher remote commands between robot board PCs and remote server control PC. Two experiments in this study show that the simple ceiling landmark method is suitable for the robot indoor navigation with low costs, and this kind of remote control system can work effectively in large and distributed laboratory.