On human performance in telerobotics

Experimental attempts to build teleoperated master-slave robot arm manipulators revealed that a human operator has difficulty in interpreting input information (coming, e.g. directly via visual tract or from fixed or moving TV monitors at the scene), and consequently in teleoperation decision making. The problem becomes more pronounced when the slave arm has to operate in a complex environment where every point of the arm body is subject to potential collision. Results are presented of experimental tests with human operators that trace the source of the difficulty to the limitations in human abilities for space orientation and interpretation of geometrical data, and a solution that capitalizes on recent developments in sensor-based motion planning for whole-sensitive robot arms is proposed. The result would be a hybrid system in which global planning is done by a human operator, whereas local collision-free motion is controlled by an assisting autopilot.>