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A Common Operator Control Unit Color Scheme for Mobile Robots

Published

Author(s)

Michael O. Shneier, Roger V. Bostelman, James S. Albus, William P. Shackleford, Tommy Chang, Tsai Hong Hong

Abstract

The Intelligent Systems Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has partici-pated in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Learning Applied to Ground Robots (LAGR) project for the past 2 ? years. In Phase 2 of the LAGR pro-gram, NIST was asked to provide a standard operator con-trol unit (OCU) color scheme for all LAGR teams to use. The standard color scheme simplifies the task of LAGR?s evaluation team by providing a straightforward way to compare the performance of each of the teams using the different OCUs. During Phase 1, LAGR performers applied their own standards to the OCU color scheme and DARPA and other performers had a very difficult experience evalu-ating what the robot was computing based on stereo image, instrumented bumper, and inertial data.  NIST developed the color scheme based on real-world conventions and on the desire to accommodate as much of the teams? existing color schemes as possible. For example, typically red lights mean stop and green lights mean go for automobiles. This scheme was adopted by coloring obstacles red and traversable ground green in the new standard color scheme. Red, green, blue (RGB) colors were produced for a variety of necessary parameters includ-ing: unknown regions, lethals, bumper hits, road/path, planned and traversed paths, goal, and waypoints. Also, vehicle modes were expressed such as: Normal Control, Aggressive, Backing, Stopped, and Manual modes.  The paper discusses the Standard Color Scheme for Ground Robots developed for the LAGR Program.
Proceedings Title
Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop | 2007 | PerMIS |
Conference Dates
August 28-30, 2007
Conference Location
Gaithersburg, MD
Conference Title
Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS) 2007

Keywords

color scheme, operator control unit, mobile robot, standard, DARPA LAGR, performance measurement

Citation

Shneier, M. , Bostelman, R. , Albus, J. , Shackleford, W. , Chang, T. and , T. (2007), A Common Operator Control Unit Color Scheme for Mobile Robots, Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop | 2007 | PerMIS |, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=823003 (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created December 28, 2007, Updated January 27, 2020