Perception of robot passability with direct line of sight and teleoperation

To examine participants' abilities to judge the passability of robots through apertures in direct-line-of-sight (DLS) and teleoperation (TO) conditions, two experiments were conducted.

Past work has demonstrated that operators find it difficult to perceive aspects of remote environments during TO. For example, urban search-and-rescue operators have experienced difficulty judging whether a robot could pass through openings or over obstacles. Although previous research has discussed perceptual difficulties in TO, the differences between DLS and TO have not been quantified.

In the first experiment, participants judged the smallest passable aperture widths for three robot sizes for both DLS and TO conditions. In the second experiment, aperture widths were judged for three camera heights and two robot distances during TO.

In the DLS condition, participants produced similar judgments for the three robot sizes using dimensionless measurements. In the TO condition, participants' judgments were more variable and they judged smaller apertures as passable.

Overall, participants judged apertures that were too small for the robot to pass as passable. This tendency was more pronounced in four instances: as robot size increased, during TO, when the camera was at its lowest height, and as distance between the robot and the aperture increased.

Judgments of passability help to quantify differences in perception between DLS and TO. These results will be useful in the design of training regimes for TO tasks. Increasing operator understanding of performance differences under varying conditions will lead them to be more accurate when making critical decisions in remote environments.