A common operator control unit color scheme for mobile robots

The Intelligent Systems Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has participated in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Learning Applied to Ground Robots (LAGR) project for the past 2 1/2 years. In Phase 2 of the LAGR program, NIST was asked to provide a common operator control unit (OCU) color scheme for all LAGR teams to use. The color scheme simplifies the task of LAGR's evaluation team by providing a straightforward way to compare the performance of each of the teams using the different OCUs. During Phase 1, LAGR performers applied their own standards to the OCU color scheme and DARPA and other performers had a very difficult experience evaluating what the robot was computing based on stereo image, instrumented bumper, and inertial data.

NIST developed the color scheme based on real-world conventions and on the desire to accommodate as much of the teams' existing color schemes as possible. For example, typically red lights mean stop and green lights mean go for automobiles. This scheme was adopted by coloring obstacles red and traversable ground green in the new common color scheme. Red, green, blue (RGB) colors were produced for a variety of necessary parameters including: unknown regions, lethals, bumper hits, road/path, planned and traversed paths, goal, and waypoints. Also, vehicle modes were expressed such as: Normal Control, Aggressive, Backing, Stopped, and Manual modes.

The paper discusses the color scheme for ground robots developed for the LAGR Program.