Utilizing Operator Intent for Haptic Teleoperation Under High Latencies

Haptic teleoperation is a promising technology with applications in telemaintenance and disaster management. However, it faces significant challenges when the application is subjected to a high network latency and environments with moving objects. This work aims to extend Model Mediated Teleoperation (MMT) to overcome challenges in supporting dynamic environments. Instead of striving for perfect model alignment, we acknowledge the inevitable mismatch between the remote environment and its model at the operator. We propose a set of design principles and an accompanying framework for designing MMT solutions that prioritize operator intent. Our approach is exemplified through an application where an operator, located 8000 km away (The Netherlands – India) and subjected to an average of 179 ms end-to-end latency, guides a robot arm to draw on a whiteboard whose position is actively altered. We evaluate the effectiveness of our approach through a user study. We show a 3-point improvement on a 7-point Likert scale when users utilize our approach to teleoperate over significant network latency of up to 1 s.