Effectiveness of Spatial Coherent Remote Drive Experience with a Telexistence Backhoe for Construction Sites

In this paper, a spatial coherent remote driving system was designed and implemented to operate a telexistence backhoe over a wireless network. Accordingly, we developed a 6 degrees of Freedom (DOF) slave robot that can mimic the human upper body movement; a cockpit with motion tracking system and a Head Mounted Display (HMD) where the operator was provided with a HD720p ultra low latency video and audio feedback from the remote backhoe, and a controller to manipulate the remote backhoe. Spatial coherent driving could help manipulating heavy machinery without any prior training and perform operations as if they were operating the machinery locally. Moreover, construction work could be performed uninterrupted (24/7) by operators remotely log-in from all over the world. This paper describes the design requirements of developing the telexistence backhoe followed by several field experiments carried out to verify the effectiveness of spatial coherent remote driving experience in construction sites.