Vision-based force guidance for improved human performance in a teleoperative manipulation system

In this paper, we discuss a methodology that employs vision-based force guidance techniques for improving human performance with respect to a teleoperated manipulation system. The primary focus of the approach is to study the effectiveness of guidance forces in a haptic system to enable ease-of-use for human operators performing common manipulation activities necessary for achievement of everyday tasks. By designing force feedback signals constructed only from visual imagery data as input into a haptic device, we show the impact on human performance during the teleoperation sequence. The methodology is explained in detail, and results of implementation on object-centering and object-approaching tasks with our divided force guidance approach are presented.