Remote Robotic Arm Teleoperation through Virtual Reality

In this work, a spatial interface was designed and evaluated for enabling effective teleoperation of bi-manual robotic manipulators. Previous work in this area has investigated using immersive virtual reality systems to provide more natural, intuitive spatial control and viewing of the remote robot workspace. The current work builds upon this research through the design of the teleoperator interface and by additionally studying how varying the spatial interaction metaphor and devices employed to control the robot impacts task performance. A user study was conducted with 33 novice teleoperators split into two groups by interaction metaphor used to control the robot end-effectors, one group using a grabbing metaphor with tracked motion controllers (Oculus Touch) and the other using driving metaphor with two fixed 6-axis controllers (3Dconnexion SpaceMouse). Results indicated that, despite the challenging task, both interfaces were highly effective for bimanual teleoperation, but that motion controls provided higher peak performance, likely due to faster gross movement planning.