Human Autonomy Teaming for ROV Shared Control

Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is a widely used subsea vehicle in offshore oil and gas industries to assist in the development and inspection of offshore oil fields, given its agility, safety, and endurance. As the offshore industry and subsea engineering fields advance, the demands on ROV technology, particularly in terms of control accuracy and safety, have been greatly increasing. Traditional methods require ROV operators to be stationed on vessels in challenging conditions, relying on video streams that offer limited spatial information about the ROV working environment. All these factors make conventional joystick controls even harder for novices. This research aims to propose a novel approach to human-autonomy collaboration aiming to diminish the learning and operational burdens on operators. A virtual reality (VR)-based sensory augmentation and body motion teleoperation method was applied, which allows operators to teleoperate the ROV in a much more comfortable environment. An interactive user interface was developed to enable seamless engagement with the autonomous system and facilitate dynamic switching between human and autonomous controls. To assess the system, a human subject experiment was conducted to compare the performance of an inspection task between human control, full autonomy, and human autonomy teaming methods. The result indicated that our solution could enhance human understanding of the ROV work status as well as reduce human workload during operation.