A User Study of a Mobile Robot Teleoperation

In this paper several interfaces for teleoperation of a mobile robot are described and analyzed. We consider teleoperation of a wheeled mobile robot when control commands are given by human operator through a haptic master device. Described human-robot teleoperation interfaces were tested by performing experiments. Main objective was to verify the role of different types of feedback information and command strategies for improving the performance of the system. Position-speed and position-position command strategies were used for mobile robot teleoperation. In position-position strategy desired speed of a mobile robot is defined by a master manipulator’s position. In position-speed command strategy robot’s position is controlled by position of master device. Hybrid command strategy, combining position-speed and position-position strategy, was introduced and used also. First, unilateral teleoperation was studied. Experiments with position-speed, position-position and hybrid command strategies were evaluated. Second, bilateral teleoperation of a mobile robot was studied using two types of force feedback: force feedback related to obstacle range information and force feedback including information about the state of the robot. For experiments with bilateral teleoperation different command strategies were applied. Advantages and disadvantages of each type of human-robot interaction interface were described.