—In this paper, we describe a remote lab system
that allows remote groups to access a shared PR2. This lab
will enable a larger and more diverse group of researchers
to participate directly in state-of-the-art robotics research and
will improve the reproducibility and comparability of robotics
experiments. We identify a set of requirements that apply to all
web-based remote laboratories and focus on solutions to these
requirements. Specifically, we present solutions to interface,
control and design difficulties in the client and server-side
software when implementing a remote laboratory architecture.
The combination of shared physical hardware and shared
middleware software allows for experiments that build upon
and compare against results on the same platform and in
the same environment for common tasks. We describe how
researchers can interact with the PR2 and its environment
remotely through a web interface, as well as develop similar
interfaces to visualize and run experiments remotely