Time Follower's Vision: A Teleoperation Interface with Past Images.

The article focuses on Time Follower's Vision which is a mixed-reality-based visual presentation system that captures a robotic vehicle's size, position, and environment, allowing even inexperienced operators to easily control it. Researchers have developed teleoperated rescue robots for search-and-rescue missions within unknown disorderly regions such as collapsed buildings, postearthquake debris, and natural disaster sites. An egocentric view camera capturing the first-person viewpoint is typically installed in such simple remote control vehicles. By observing the camera image without an efficient human interface system, the operator tends to misinterpret the robot's position and direction, which in turn reduces the probability of achieving critical mission objectives. To appropriately attach an exocentric view camera, the vehicle needs to be larger. Such a large body often disturbs the vehicle's activity. Therefore, it's more effective to provide a virtual exocentric view. Another problem with an egocentric view camera is that it only shows an image of the environment from the vehicle's current position. However, when the vehicle advances forward, a previous image captures more environmental information on the vehicle than a current image. This image's viewpoint contains the current vehicle's position.