Implementation and Evaluation of Latency Visualization Method for Teleoperated Vehicle

Abstract

Teleoperation is a crucial technology for unmanned autonomous vehicles. When an autonomous vehicle does not work as desired, an operator teleoperates the vehicle and drives it to a safe place. Therefore, driving accuracy is essential in teleoperation. In teleoperation, a latency, consisting of transmission time and signal processing time, exists and impairs driving accuracy. A latency visualization method, which shows the gap due to latency between the vehicle's actual position and the position that the driver can see on the on-board camera videos, is considered a promising solution. Several studies have shown the latency visualization method's effectiveness through simulation-based evaluations, but it has not been evaluated in a real environment. In this paper, we proposed a latency visualization method that can be implemented in a real environment, where the latency can change frequently, and evaluated the method through a user test. The results show that the proposed latency visualization method improves driving accuracy in a real environment, and the improvement is more significant with longer latency.