PAPRLE: Plug-And-Play Robotic Limb Environment: A Modular Ecosystem for Robotic Limbs

Abstract

We introduce PAPRLE (plug-and-play robotic limb environment), a modular ecosystem that enables flexible placement and control of robotic limbs. With PAPRLE a user can change the arrangement of the robotic limbs and control them using a variety of input devices, including puppeteers, gaming controllers, and virtual reality (VR) devices. This versatility supports a wide range of teleoperation scenarios and promotes adaptability to different task requirements. We also introduce a pluggable puppeteer device that can be easily mounted and adapted to match the target robot configurations. PAPRLE supports bilateral teleoperation through these puppeteer devices, agnostic to the type or configuration of the follower robot. The modular design of PAPRLE facilitates novel spatial arrangements of the limbs and enables scalable data collection, thereby advancing research in embodied artificial intelligence (AI) and learning-based control. We validate PAPRLE in various real-world settings, demonstrating its versatility across diverse combinations of leader devices and follower robots. The system will be released as open source, including both hardware and software components, to support broader adoption and extension.