Abstract
Intuitive interaction is the cornerstone of accurate and effective performance in remote robotic teleoperation. It requires high-fidelity in control actions as well as perception (vision, haptic, and other sensory feedback) of the remote environment. This paper presents Vicarios, a Virtual Reality (VR) based interface with the aim of facilitating intuitive real-time remote teleoperation, while utilizing the inherent benefits of VR, including immersive visualization, freedom of user viewpoint selection, and fluidity of interaction through natural action interfaces. Vicarios aims to enhance the situational awareness, using the concept of viewpoint-independent mapping between the operator and the remote scene, thereby giving the operator better control in the perception-action loop. The article describes the overall system of Vicarios, with its software, hardware, and communication framework. A comparative user study quantifies the impact of the interface and its features, including immersion and instantaneous user viewpoint changes, termed “teleporting”, on users’ performance. The results show that users’ performance with the VR-based interface was either similar to or better than the baseline condition of traditional stereo video feedback, approving the realistic nature of the Vicarios interface. Furthermore, including the teleporting feature in VR significantly improved participants’ performance and their appreciation for it, which was evident in the post-questionnaire results. Vicarios capitalizes on the intuitiveness and flexibility of VR to improve accuracy in remote teleoperation.
Highlights
State-of-the-art systems in remote robotic teleoperation are able to execute complex, yet dexterous, tasks in demanding substantial research exists in the control of telerobotic systems [28], research into visual feedback of the remote environment that can significantly help and support effective teleoperation lags behind
Modern virtual reality (VR) interfaces, owing to the video-gaming community, have seen important technological advances in graphics engines and devices [29] in terms of immersion, the development of natural physical control devices, high-fidelity graphical renderings, and native user viewpoint changes for near-natural visualizations, which overcome some of the limitations mentioned above
We present Vicarios, a VR-based interface that facilitates real-time remote robotic teleoperation, while exploiting the immersiveness and high-fidelity of VR for real-time feedback
Summary
Substantial research exists in the control of telerobotic systems [28], research into visual feedback of the remote environment that can significantly help and support effective teleoperation lags behind. The traditional user interfaces used for such guidance in standard teleoperation, relying mostly on stereo video feedback from the remote environment, suffer from limitations including accessibility, fixed or non-adaptable camera viewpoints, occluded views of the manipulation space, improper mapping between operator and robot motions, two-dimensional displays, cybersickness due to inconsistent 80 Page 2 of 16. Human operators are believed to build a mental model of the affordances of the task and the remote environment, based on the available visual feedback [14]. Milgram and Ballantyne [30] have highlighted the similarity between telerobotics and VR, sharing the common structure of projecting the user to the remote environment
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
