Teleoperation of robots听can be quite challenging, especially for novice users because it听forces users to focus on low-level aspects of robot control, rather than higher level goals regarding task completion, data analysis听and problem solving.
This project involved the investigation of听remote control systems that help people operate complex robots. Different strategies were researched for providing assistance to robot operators, including learning more about operators' goals, so that robots could听be more helpful.听
The researchers explored how advances in augmented reality (AR) may enable the design of novel teleoperation interfaces that increase operation effectiveness, support the user in conducting concurrent work听and decrease stress. A听key insight is that AR may be used such that a teleoperator controls a virtual robot surrogate, rather than directly operating the robot itself, providing the user with foresight regarding where the physical robot will end up and how it will get there. The researchers presented the design of two novel interfaces using such a surrogate: one focused on real-time control and one inspired by waypoint delegation. They听compared these designs against a baseline teleoperation system in a laboratory experiment in which novice and expert users piloted an aerial robot to inspect an environment and analyze data. Their听results revealed that the augmented reality prototypes provided several objective and subjective improvements, demonstrating the promise of leveraging AR to improve human-robot interactions.
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Publications
- Michael Walker, Hooman Hedayati听and Daniel Szafir.听2019.听Robot Teleoperation with Augmented Reality Virtual Surrogates. In Proceedings of the 2019听ACM/IEEE听International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '19).听(Daegu, South Korea 鈥� March 11-14, 2019).
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Associated Researchers
