Utility of Situation Awareness and Attention for Describing Telepresence Experiences in a Virtual Teleoperation Task

The current study assessed the utility of measures of situation awareness (SA) and attention allocation for objectively describing telepresence. The concepts of SA and attention have been identified as cognitive constructs potentially underlying telepresence experiences. The motivation for this research was to establish an objective measure of telepresence and to further investigate the relationship between telepresence and teleoperation task performance. Research subjects performed a virtual demining task at varying levels of difficulty using a simulated rover equipped with mine neutralization tools. At the same time, they completed two secondary monitoring tasks. Teleoperation task performance, SA, secondary task performance (attention), and telepresence were measured during the experiment. Results demonstrated level of difficulty (LOD) effects on performance and telepresence. Regression analysis revealed LOD and attention to explain significant portions of the variance in telepresence. Correlation analyses revealed significant relationships between teleoperation task performance and subjective ratings of telepresence, as well as telepresence and SA and attention.