Semi-autonomous Camera Positioning System for Discussion Panel Application on Quadruped Robot

A camera operator can be partly replaced by a robot. With recent advancements in mobile robotics area, popularity of such robots is increasing. Mobile robots can successfully perform increasingly advanced tasks. This work aims to introduce quadruped mobile robot hosting discussion panel. The operator work is simplified to control robot behaviour only by selecting current speaker. With use of Spot® from Boston Dynamics® equipped with stereo cameras, the cameraman work has been performed. To realize such task, two level control system has been developed. First level, named global positioning, allows to move the robot to desired position in global coordinate system. It adjusts the robot pose (x, y, yaw) to the current speaker chosen from the operator control panel. Positions can be entered manually or be generated automatically in a regular distance on desired angles span. Second level, named local positioning, uses SPOT® cameras to detect speaker face and to follow it while they are giving a speech. Discussion panel is streamed via mobile phone mounted on the robot and distributed on MS Teams platform.