Operating in Con guration Space Signi cantly Improves Human Performance in Teleoperation

This paper discusses the use of con guration space (C-space) as a means of visualization and control in teleoperation of robot arm manipulators. The motivation is to improve operator performance in tasks involving manipulator motion in a complex three-dimensional (3D) environment with obstacles. Unlike other motion planning tasks, operators are known to make expensive mistakes in arm control, due to de ciencies of human spatial reasoning. The advantage of C-space is that in it the arm becomes a point, a case which humans are much better equipped to handle. To make such operation possible, a tool is proposed that reduces motion in 3D C-space to that in 2D C-space. It is then shown on results from testing 18 human subjects that translating the problem of a three-link 3D arm manipulator motion into C-space improves the operator performance remarkably, by a factor of 2 to 4, compared to usual work space control.