Computer-aided teleoperation of an urban vehicle

INRIA has developed in cooperation with industry and INRETS a small computer-controlled electric vehicle for urban transport. These public vehicles which are available in self-service mode, are normally driven by the users with a simple joystick. However, to move the empty vehicles to wherever they are needed, we have developed two techniques. The first one consists of platooning the empty vehicles behind an operator-driven vehicle. The second technique is to teleoperate the vehicle from a central location. The teleoperation technique is derived from experiments conducted on teleoperated military or civil vehicles. This paper presents the computer assisted teleoperation technique and the first results in a real-life environment. Ultrasonic sensors are used to assist the operator in very cluttered environments.