Visual Aids for Lunar Rover Tele-operation

Future Lunar missions will require significant and speedy traverses of the terrain by robotic vehicles. Because of the Moon’s proximity to the Earth it is very tempting to tele-operate robotic vehicles from the Earth, rather than have them operate autonomously. We have found that operators quickly develop the ability to predict the effect of their commands but have difficulty synchronizing their commands with the feedback they are getting, often causing the robot to be over controlled. To help mitigate these effects we have created an operator workstation that graphically shows the operator where their commands are with relation to the feedback loop. In this way the operator can integrate the visual feedback from the robot with the commands they are about to send and those they already have issued. This interface has been used in a rover field test, and a testing simulator has also been created.