Human engineered remote driving system

A system for driving a vehicle from a remote control station comprising:

• a television sensor on the vehicle for providing video images from the vehicle of an environment in which the vehicle is operating;
• sampling means on the vehicle for sampling the video images at a reduced frame rate, thereby providing video image data at a reduced bandwidth;
• data compression means on the vehicle for further reducing the bandwidth of the video image data;
• inertial means on the vehicle for providing instantaneous vehicle position and attitude data at a low data rate for transmission to the control station;
• a narrow band radio frequency data link for transmitting the reduced bandwidth video data and low data rate position and attitude data to the control station;
• receiving means at the control station for receiving the reduced bandwidth video data and low data rate position and attitude data transmitted from the vehicle;
• decompression means at the control station for reproducing the video images at the reduced frame rate;
• memory means at the control station for temporarily storing the reproduced video images;
• coefficient generation means at the control station for receiving the low data rate position and attitude data and computing the coefficients required to transform images in said memory means into real time video images;
• image generation means responsive to said coefficients for transforming images in said memory means into real time video images;
• and
• display means for displaying the real time video images to assist an operator in remotely controlling the vehicle.

A method for driving a vehicle from a remote control station comprising the steps of:

• sensing images from the vehicle at a low frame rate to produce a series of snapshots of an environment in which the vehicle is operating;
• determining the instantaneous position and attitude of the vehicle;
• transmitting the snapshots and position and attitude to the remote control station;
• temporarily storing the snapshots at the remote control station and extrapolating between snapshots based on the vehicle position and attitude to generate a continuous real time image of the vehicle environment;
• and
• displaying the continuous real time image to assist an operator in controlling the vehicle.

A method for transmitting and receiving video data in a television format comprising the steps of:

• sampling video data from a camera at a reduced frame rate;
• sensing instantaneous position and attitude information of the camera;
• using the instantaneous position and attitude information to extrapolate between sampled video data to generate real time video image data;
• and
• displaying the generate real time video image data.