“Moving to the centre”: A gaze-driven remote camera control for teleoperation

Abstract

In general, conventional control interfaces such as joysticks, switches, and wheels are predominantly used in teleoperation. However, operators normally have to control multiple complex devices simultaneously. For example, controlling a rock breaker and a remote camera at the same time in mining teleoperation. This overloads the operator’s control capability of using hands, increases workload and reduces productivity. We present a novel gaze-driven remote camera control with an implemented prototype, which follows a simple and natural design principle: “Whatever you look at on the screen, it moves to the centre!”. A user study of modeled hands-busy experiment has been conducted, comparing the performance of using gaze-driven control and traditional joystick control through both objective measures and subjective measures. The experimental results clearly show the gaze-driven control significantly outperformed the conventional joystick control.