Immersive Telerobotic Modular Framework using stereoscopic HMD's

Mobile devices power and capabilities are growing at an incredible rate, turning them into a perfect choice for mobile robotics - operating as onboard computers. Telerobotics field lacks immersive elements, like stereoscopic vision, and solutions are far from affordable. Researchers still need to prove that immersion real pays off in telerobotics. A modular and adaptable platform that can be used in various case studies would give more precious time to researchers focus on their investigation. The expansion of technologies such as mobile (e.g. smartphones, tablets, arduino), low-cost immersive solutions like Oculus Rift and web-based technologies like WebRTC and WebGL turns possible the development of a real-time software solution. We propose an alternative approach to common teleoperation methods such as these found, for instance, in search and rescue (SAR) robots. A framework was created and a prototype developed, scientific focus was to test the impact that stereoscopic vision and HMDs can bring to the control of robots from a distance. A practical experiment has been performed where the majority of participants had improvements (80%) with stereo vision in a visual search task.