Bioinspired Implementation and Assessment of a Remote-Controlled Robot

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Human-Machine Interaction (HMI)
• Bio-inspired Engineering

Background:

• Modern daily life involves increasing interaction with autonomous smart machines.
• The transparency of smart machine intelligence for end-users remains a challenge.
• Evaluating the quality of remote control for autonomous systems is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the remote control quality of a mobile robot based on human-like behavior.
• To compare human-machine interaction (HMI) performance using a bio-inspired control law versus traditional methods.
• To investigate the impact of the two-thirds power law on robot control and user experience.

Main Methods:

• Implemented the bio-inspired two-thirds power law in a semi-autonomous mobile robot.
• Compared participant performance in teleoperating the robot under three conditions: biological (power law), manual, and non-biological control.
• Analyzed task completion time, number of collisions, and trajectory smoothness.

Main Results:

• Significantly lower path completion times and fewer collisions were observed in the biological control condition.
• Smoother, more curvilinear trajectories were achieved when steering was assisted by the power law integration.
• The study provides a refined evaluation of HMI quality based on movement kinematics naturalness.

Conclusions:

• The two-thirds power law enhances mobile robot control, leading to improved human-machine interaction.
• Findings support the hypothesis linking the power law to jerk minimization and suggest a central nervous system (CNS) origin.
• An anthropocentric approach, integrating bio-inspired principles, can significantly enhance HMI quality.