An Evaluation of Hand Trajectory Gesture Controlled Vehicular Robot

Vehicular robotics (VRs) is an emerging field in Mechatronics application that offers numerous benefits to assisted living systems, exploits in unsafe terrains, agricultural harvesting, and manufacturing automation, among others. The absence of gesture angular displacement to speed relationship remains unresolved in literature. Existing systems controlled by hand gesture uses Radio Frequency (RF) module as a medium of wireless communication. In this paper, a re-engineered VR controlled by five palm gestures is implemented and evaluated. An accelerometer-powered transmitter circuitry for the palm glove is realized while integrating Bluetooth spectrum at the VR receiver for wireless signalling. C+ constructs are introduced for end-to-end control between the transmitter and receiver. Performance assessment carried out on actual speed, response time and a blind spot in both autonomous and semi-autonomous modes provided satisfactory insights. It is observed that in semi-autonomous mode (gesture mode), under tilting palm angle ranged 0-40 degrees, a minimum speed of 0.55m/s was observed. A medium speed of 0.63m/s and a maximum speed of 0.91m/s are obtained at 40 to 60 degrees and 70 to 90 degrees respectively. Furthermore, the autonomous mode offered a speed of 0.97m/s.

An Evaluation of Hand Trajectory Gesture Controlled Vehicular Robot Keywords:

Mechatronics , Industry 4.0 , Robotic vehicles , Automation , Embedded Systems