Probing the design space of a telepresence robot gesture arm with low fidelity prototypes
Patrik Björnfot, Victor Kaptelinin
The general problem addressed in this paper is supporting a more efficient communication between remote users, controlling telepresence robots, and people in the local setting. The design of most telepresence robots does not allow them to perform gestures. Given the key role of pointing in human communication, exploring design solutions for providing telepresence robots with deictic gesturing capabilities is, arguably, a timely research issue for Human-Robot Interaction. To address this issue we conducted an empirical study, in which a set of low fidelity prototypes, illustrating various designs of a robot’s gesture arm, were assessed by the participants (N=18). The study employed a mixed-method approach, a combination of a controlled experiment, elicitation study, and design provocation. The evidence collected in the study reveals participants’ assessment of the designs, used in the study, and provides insights into participants’ attitudes and expectations regarding gestural communication with telepresence robots in general.
A Motion Retargeting Method for Effective Mimicry-based Teleoperation of Robot Arms
Daniel Rakita, Bilge Mutlu, Michael Gleicher
In this paper, we introduce a novel interface for teleoperation that allows novice users to effectively and intuitively control robot manipulators. The premise of our method is that an interface that allows a user to direct a robot using the natural 6-DOF space of his/her hand would afford effective direct control of a robot arm. However, a direct mapping between the user’s hand and the robot’s end effector is impractical because the robot has different kinematic and speed capabilities than the human arm. Our key idea is that by relaxing the constraint of the direct mapping between hand position and orientation and end effector configuration, a system can provide the user with the feel of direct control, yet be able to achieve the practical requirements for telemanipulation such as motion smoothness and singularity avoidance. We present methods for implementing a motion retargeting solution that achieves this relaxed control using constrained optimization and describe a system that utilizes it to provide real-time control of a robot arm. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a user study that shows that novice users can complete a range of tasks more efficiently and enjoyably using our relaxed-mimicry based interface than with standard interfaces.
A Comparison of Remote Robot Teleoperation Interfaces for General Object Manipulation
David Kent, Carl Saldanha, Sonia Chernova
Robust remote teleoperation of high-DOF manipulators is of critical importance across a wide range of robotics applications. Contemporary robot manipulation interfaces primarily utilize a free-positioning pose specification approach to independently control each axis of translation and orientation in free space. In this work, we present two novel interfaces, constrained positioning and point-and-click, which incorporate scene information including points-of-interest and local surface geometry into the grasp specification process. We also present results of a user study evaluation comparing the effects of increased use of scene information in grasp pose specification algorithms for general object manipulation. The results of our study show that constrained positioning and point-and-click significantly outperform the widely used free positioning approach by significantly reducing the number of grasping errors and the number of user interactions required to specify poses. Furthermore, the point-and-click interface significantly increased the number of tasks users were able to complete.
Haptic Shape-Based Management of Robot Teams in Cordon and Patrol
Samuel McDonald, Mark Colton, Kristopher Alder, Michael Goodrich
There is a growing need to develop effective interaction methods that enable a single operator to manage a team of multiple robots. A novel approach that involves treating the team as a moldable volume is presented, in which deformations of the volume correspond to changes in team shape. The team possesses a level of autonomy that allows the team to travel to and surround buildings of interest in a patrol and cordon scenario. During surround mode, the operator explores or manipulates the team shape to create desired formations around a building. A spacing interaction method also allows the operator to adjust how robots are spaced within the current shape. Separate haptic feedback is developed for each method to allow the operator to “feel” the shape or spacing manipulation. During travel mode, the operator chooses desired travel locations and receives feedback to help identify how and where the team travels. Results from a human-subject experiment suggest that haptic feedback significantly improves operator performance in a reconnaissance task when task demand is higher, but may slightly increase operator workload. In the context of the experimental setup, these results suggest that haptic feedback may contribute to heads-up control of a team of autonomous robots. There were no significance differences in levels of situation awareness due to haptic feedback in this study.
Design and Evaluation of Adverb Palette: A GUI for Selecting Tradeoffs in Multi-objective Optimization Problems
Meher Shaikh, Michael Goodrich
An important part of expressing human intent is identifying acceptable tradeoffs among competing performance objectives. We present and evaluate a set of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), that are designed to allow a human to express intent by expressing desirable tradeoffs. The GUIs require an algorithm that identifies the set of Pareto optimal solutions to the multi-objective decision problem, which means that all the solutions are equally good in the sense that there are no other solutions better for every objective. Given the Pareto set, the GUIs provide different ways for a human to express intent by exploring tradeoffs between objectives; once a tradeoff is selected, the solution is chosen. The GUI designs are applied to interactive human-robot path-selection for a robot in an urban environment, but they can be applied to other tradeoff problems. A user study evaluates GUI designs by requiring users to select a tradeoff that satisfies a specified mission intent. Results of the user study suggest that GUIs designed to support an artist’s palette-metaphor can be used to express intent without incurring unacceptable levels of human workload.
Movers, Shakers, and Those Who Stand Still: Visual attention-grabbing techniques in robot tele-operation
Daniel Rea, Stela Seo, Neil Bruce, James Young
We designed and evaluated a series of teleoperation interface techniques that aim to draw operator attention while mitigating negative effects of interruption. Monitoring live teleoperation video feeds, for example to search for survivors in search and rescue, can be cognitively taxing, particularly for operators simultaneously driving a robot or monitoring multiple cameras. To reduce workload, emerging computer vision techniques can automatically identify and indicate (cue) salient points of potential interest for the operator. However, it is not clear how to cue such points to a preoccupied operator, whether cues would be distracting and a hindrance to operators, and how the design of the cue may impact operator cognitive load, attention drawn, and primary task performance. In this paper, we detail our iterative design process for creating a range of visual attention-grabbing cues that are grounded in psychological literature on human attention, and two formal evaluations that measure attention-grabbing capability and impact on operator performance. Our results show that visually cueing on-screen points of interest does not distract operators, that operators perform poorly without the cues, and detail how particular cue design parameters impact operator cognitive load and task performance. Finally, from this process we provide original, tested, and theoretically grounded cues for attention drawing in teleoperation
Event Timeslots (1)
Thu, Mar 9
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New Techniques for Remotley Controlling Robots