Tele-operation of Robot Teams: A Comparison of Gamepad-, Mobile Device and Hand Tracking-Based User Interfaces

Due to the continuous advancements made in robot technologies, the development of intuitive and effective user interfaces for human-robot interaction is getting increasingly important. This paper investigates how different types of interfaces can be used for allowing a single operator to remotely control a team of robots endowed with different capabilities. Attention is focused on three user interfaces based on a gamepad, on a mobile device and on hand tracking, respectively. To evaluate pros and cons of the above interfaces, a user study was conducted, in which participants had to combine the capabilities of a rover, a drone and a robotic arm in order to carry out a search and pick task. Based on the experiments, the fastest way to complete the task was to use the mobile device. However, results showed that some of the interfaces could provide better performances for selected robots and associated sub-tasks. It is worth observing that, despite evidences about efficiency, participants rated the gamepad as the preferred interface from the point of view of subjective usability.