Effects of Visual Interface Design, and Control Mode and Latency on Performance, Telepresence and Workload in a Teleoperation Task

Abstract

Human-machine interfaces that facilitate telepresence are speculated to improve performance with teleoperators. Unfortunately, there is little experimental evidence to substantiate a direct link between the two. Further, there are limited data available on technological and psychological factors that affect telepresence. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the influence of interface design configuration, and control mode and latency on teleoperation performance, telepresence, and workload in a pick-and-place task. It was conducted to enhance understanding of the concept of telepresence and promote future development of telepresence-based guidelines for teleoperator systems. An experiment was conducted in which subjects were required to control a telerobot in a simple pick-and-place task through a virtual reality (VR) interface with or without live-video feedback on the motion of the robot. Rotational or translational motion control of the robot was studied under four control latencies ranging from 0 to 4 seconds. Results demonstrated significant benefits of using VR in conjunction with video feedback to control the telerobot. Rotational control appeared to better meet user expectations of robot motion control than modes involving translations of joint positions. Performance with the VR interface without live video feedback appeared to be sensitive to control latency. Correlation analysis provided further evidence of a positive link between telepresence and performance.