Real World Teleoperation via Virtual Environment Modelling

The fields of artificial reality and conventional telerobotics share many common technological challenges. In this paper we discuss the concept of applying techniques of virtual environment simulation to address some of the challenges of remote manipulation of teleoperated systems in unstructured environments, with a focus on remote excavation. We first present a taxonomy of factors for distinguishing between some of the constraints imposed by different remote interaction environments. In contrast to the conventional methods of continuous closed loop manual control of remote systems, we discuss the concept of supervisory control. This leads to the notion of elevating the operator from low level tasks by providing a virtual model of the remote work site, to allow the operator to plan and rehearse remote operations off-line prior to execution. In an attempt to reduce this concept to practice, we review two complementary approaches: Augmented Reality TEleManipulation Interface System (ARTEMIS) and Virtual Environment for Remote Operations (VERO).