Ecological Interfaces for Improving Mobile Robot Teleoperation

TLDR

Navigation is critical for remote robot missions such as search and rescue, reconnaissance, and space exploration, yet it is hampered by poor situational awareness, prompting experts to advocate for interfaces that deliver richer spatial context. This paper introduces an ecological interface that fuses video, map, and robot‑pose data into a 3‑D mixed‑reality display to improve operator situational awareness. The interface is evaluated in planar environments by comparing it to the standard paradigm in simulated and real‑world user studies. The results lead to a set of principles for presenting information to remote robot operators.

Abstract

Navigation is an essential element of many remote robot operations including search and rescue, reconnaissance, and space exploration. Previous reports on using remote mobile robots suggest that navigation is difficult due to poor situation awareness. It has been recommended by experts in human-robot interaction that interfaces between humans and robots provide more spatial information and better situational context in order to improve an operator's situation awareness. This paper presents an ecological interface paradigm that combines video, map, and robot-pose information into a 3-D mixed-reality display. The ecological paradigm is validated in planar worlds by comparing it against the standard interface paradigm in a series of simulated and real-world user studies. Based on the experiment results, observations in the literature, and working hypotheses, we present a series of principles for presenting information to an operator of a remote robot.