Human-Centered Design and Evaluation of Haptic Teleoperation for Multiple Mobile Robots

Introduction

The use of multi-robot systems, when compared to single robot approaches, allows several improvements to be achieved in terms of performance, e.g., completion time and robustness. While recent years have seen increasing research on the development of bilateral teleoperation algorithms that can efficiently and robustly control multiple mobile robots (e.g., Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)) [1], comparatively less attention has been devoted towards understanding how teleoperation performance can be improved with regards to the human operator in this considerably different task [2]. Given this level of interest in multiple-mobile-robot teleoperation, we believe that it is worthwhile to investigate how human control performance can be assessed within this context.

Goals

In this project, our aim is to propose a number of haptic feedback schemes for the teleoperation of multiple UAVs that could increase the operator’s performance in maneuvering the remote UAVs.

Methods

Psychophysical experiment evaluations are conducted for testing three kinds of haptic cues w.r.t. two most relevant performance indexes (maneuverability [3] and perceptual sensitivity [4]) in the field of mobile robot teleoperation (Figure 1).

Results

The experimental results clearly show that the maneuverability performance is best supported by the Force cue feedback. The results further show that the Velocity cue feedback confers a better perceptual sensitivity to the teleoperator than the other haptic cue feedbacks.

Conclusion

Maneuverability performance as well as perceptual awareness is equally important qualities during bilateral teleoperation. In light of this, the appropriate haptic feedback algorithm ought to be selected according to the application and the objective of the operator. The current evaluation of fabricated haptic cues for their influence on performance should allow us to design better algorithms for controlling multiple UAVs [5].

Figure 1. Experimental setup. Subject with haptic device (Omega 3) and Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)

References

1.      Lee D., Franchi A., Robuffo Giordano P., Son H. I., Bülthoff H. H. (2011) Haptic Teleoperation of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles over the Internet IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 1341-1347.

2.      Franchi A., Secchi C., Son H. I., Bülthoff H. H., Robuffo Giordano P. (2011) Bilateral Teleoperation of Groups of Mobile Robots with Time-Varying Topology IEEE Transactions on Robotics (accepted).

3.      Son H. I., Chuang L. L., Franchi A., Kim J., Lee D., Lee S.-W., Bülthoff H. H., Robuffo Giordano P. (2011) Measuring an Operator's Maneuverability Performance in the Haptic Teleoperation of Multiple Robots IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 3039-3046.

4.      Son H. I., Kim J., Chuang L. L., Franchi A., Robuffo Giordano P., Lee D., Bülthoff H. H.  (2011) An Evaluation of Haptic Cues on the Tele-Operator's Perceptual Awareness of Multiple UAVs' Environments IEEE World Haptics Conference 149-154.

5.      Son H. I., Franchi A., Chuang L. L., Kim J., Bülthoff H. H., Robuffo Giordano P. (2011) Human-Centered Design and Evaluation of Haptic Cueing for Teleoperation of Multiple Mobile Robots IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics (submitted).