Effects of Throughput Delay on Perception of Robot Teleoperation and Head Control Precision in Remote Monitoring Tasks

For robot teleoperators, replicating head motion in a remote environment is often necessary to complete monitoring and face-to-face service tasks. Especially in the case of a stereoscopic camera rig, remote cameras need to be moved to match the operator's head position and optical axes in order to interact with a remote entity, follow targets, or reorient. However, mechanical, computational, and network delay in such teleoperation can cause intersensory conflict, perceptual deficits, and reduction in performance, especially during activities that require head rotation. In this article, we evaluate the effects of view reconstruction on performance and perception for remote monitoring tasks. To do so, we first implemented a panoramic reconstruction method to reduce perceived latency in a humanoid robot, which allows us to compare and contrast latency. Next, we designed a bidirectional remote control system for the robot and set up a series of experiments where participants had to conduct focused head control tasks through the perspective of the robot. This allowed us to compare the effects of latency on head movement, accuracy, and subjective perception of the interface and remote teleoperation. Results showed that panoramic reconstruction significantly improved perception and comfort during teleoperation, but that performance only improved for tasks requiring slower head movements.