Remote activation of serial ports using ssh

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Hi all, I could not seem to find the answer (or the right keywords) for this on the internet. I'll try to keep it short otherwise I could go on and on.... I basically have a raspberry pi 2 controlling a Neato-xv-11 Lidar (both closed-loop rotation and data spoofing). The code works quite well actually, but the intention is to have the lidar on a mobile platform and view the outcome using Rviz from a remote computer via WiFi. That actually works as well, but only if I start the spoofing node available here from within the Pi itself.

When I try to start (roslaunch) this node using ssh, I get an error. My guess is that it has something to do with the fact that this node addresses a dev/ttyusb0 that is local on the Pi (cp2102-usb-breakout). Why is this happening? Is there any way around this?

I'm using Kinetic on both machines, with Pi running Jessie 8, and PC running Ubuntu 16.04.

My error message is as follows (ignore the host names, they were arbitrary):

pi@erle-brain-2 ~ $ roslaunch neato_real neato_lidar_drivers.launch
... logging to /home/pi/.ros/log/51d2060c-47c1-11e7-8a35-c417feb194f9/roslaunch-erle-brain-2-6338.log
Checking log directory for disk usage. This may take awhile.
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Done checking log file disk usage. Usage is <1GB.

started roslaunch server http://erle-brain-2:35380/

SUMMARY

PARAMETERS
 * /rosdistro: kinetic
 * /rosversion: 1.12.4

NODES
  /
    lidar_driver (xv_11_laser_driver/neato_laser_publisher)
    lidar_rotator (neato_real/lidar_rotator_raspi.py)

ROS_MASTER_URI=http://movies-PC:11311

core service [/rosout] found
process[lidar_driver-1]: started with pid [6349]
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
  what():  locale::facet::_S_create_c_locale name not valid
process[lidar_rotator-2]: started with pid [6350]
[lidar_driver-1] process has died [pid 6349, exit code -6, cmd /home/pi/catkin_ws/devel/lib/xv_11_laser_driver/neato_laser_publisher _port:=/dev/ttyUSB0 __name:=lidar_driver __log:=/home/pi/.ros/log/51d2060c-47c1-11e7-8a35-c417feb194f9/lidar_driver-1.log].
log file: /home/pi/.ros/log/51d2060c-47c1-11e7-8a35-c417feb194f9/lidar_driver-1*.log
^C[lidar_rotator-2] killing on exit
shutting down processing monitor...
... shutting down processing monitor complete
done

Thanks is advance, Steve