A Human-in-the-Loop Study of Eye-Movement-Based Control for Workload Reduction in Delayed Teleoperation of Ground Vehicles

Teleoperated ground vehicles (TGVs) are widely applied in hazardous and dynamic environments, where communication delay and low transparency increase operator workload and reduce control performance. This study explores the cognitive and physiological workload associated with such conditions and evaluates the effectiveness of an eye-movement-based predicted trajectory guidance control (ePTGC) framework in alleviating operator burden. A human-in-the-loop teleoperation experiment was conducted using a 2 × 2 within-subject design, incorporating subjective ratings (NASA-TLX), objective performance metrics from a dual-task paradigm (one-back memory task), and multimodal physiological indicators (ECG and EDA). Results show that delay and low transparency significantly elevated subjective, objective, and physiological workload levels. Compared to direct control (DC), the ePTGC framework significantly reduced workload across all three dimensions, particularly under high-delay conditions, while maintaining or even improving task performance. Notably, ePTGC enabled even lower workload levels under low-delay conditions than the baseline condition. These findings demonstrate the potential of the ePTGC framework to enhance teleoperation stability and reduce operator burden in delay-prone and low-transparency scenarios.