Attentiveness Map Estimation for Haptic Teleoperation of Mobile Robot Obstacle Avoidance and Approach

Haptic feedback can improve safety of teleoperated robots when situational awareness is limited or operators are inattentive. Standard potential field approaches increase haptic resistance as an obstacle is approached, which is desirable when the operator is unaware of the obstacle but undesirable w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters 2024-03, Vol.9 (3), p.2152-2159
Main Authors: Zhong, Ninghan, Hauser, Kris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Feedback
Haptics
Obstacle avoidance
Potential fields
Robots
Safety
Situational awareness
User experience
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Haptic feedback can improve safety of teleoperated robots when situational awareness is limited or operators are inattentive. Standard potential field approaches increase haptic resistance as an obstacle is approached, which is desirable when the operator is unaware of the obstacle but undesirable when the movement is intentional, such as when the operator wishes to inspect or manipulate an object. This letter presents a novel haptic teleoperation framework that estimates the operator's attentiveness to obstacles and dampens haptic feedback for intentional movement. A biologically-inspired attention model is developed based on computational working memory theories to integrate visual saliency estimation with spatial mapping. The attentiveness map is generated in real-time, and our system renders lower haptic forces for obstacles that the operator is estimated to be aware of. Experimental results in simulation show that the proposed framework outperforms haptic teleoperation without attentiveness estimation in terms of task performance, robot safety, and user experience.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2024.3354613