A Tethering Device for Mobile Robot Guidance

A new human and robot interface tool, so-called Navi-Guider, which makes it easy to handle mobile robots, is presented in this paper. The Navi-Guider is easily mounted on a mobile robot and is able to detect a length and a direction of the tether pulled out by a user. Those detected factors are utilized for the robot guidance and control. This paper addresses detailed hardware and software architecture of the Navi-Guider and demonstrates the practical usability of the system through actual experimental tests. The new device, NaviGuider, is an intuitive control tool for moving mobile robots from a place to another place just by pulling the tether.