Immersive Telerobotics Using the Oculus Rift and the 5DT Ultra Data Glove

There is significant interest in tele-operating simulated or physical robots in hostile environments, particularly for military, policing, medical, and gaming environments. This paper describes a developed Virtual Reality (VR) application that allows a user to control a simulated immersive robot in a combat scenario. We have incorporated a 5DT Ultra Data Glove and an Oculus Rift in our proposed combat scenario and compared our results in both an immersive and non-immersive environment. The immersive environment involves the 5DT data-glove and Oculus Rift for navigation and control. On the other hand, the non-immersive environment involves using a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. We perform a user study for both environments to assess user control interface preferences over the simulated application. Preliminary results of our post analysis survey suggest that users prefer the immersive mode of operation.