Teleoperation interfaces for a remote controlled hydraulic mobile machine

The mobile machine subject to study is a skid steered loader equipped with boom and bucket. In order to teleoperate the mobile machine, two operator-machine interfaces, which take into account the special requirements of hydraulic machines, have been designed and tested. The operator-machine interfaces are implemented in a laptop computer equipped with a steering wheel, pedals and joystick and in a handheld computer. The performance of each interface is evaluated by carrying out tasks involving motion control and load handling. Task completion times and number of task errors are considered and compared between the different operator control interfaces and a manually operated machine. The results indicate that good performance is obtained with the laptop computer with steering wheel, although the choice of the operator-machine interface is very task dependent and the handheld computer control yields good results in some particular cases.