Development and analysis of an operator steering model for teleoperated mobile robots under constant and variable latencies

Abstract

SUMMARYLatency hinders a mobile robot teleoperator's ability to perform remote tasks. However, this effect is not well modeled. This paper develops a model for teleoperator steering behavior as a PD controller based on projected lateral displacement, which was tuned to reflect user performance determined by a 31-subject user study under constant and variable latency (having mean latencies between 0 and 750 ms). Additionally, we determined that operator performance under variable latency could be mapped to the expected performance of an equivalent constant latency. We then tested additional latency distributions in simulation and demonstrated equivalent steering performance among several different latency distributions.

Modeling Human Steering Behavior During Path Following in Teleoperation of Unmanned Ground Vehicles

“…This need has been recognized in the literature when modeling human performance in teleoperating mobile robots (Vozar, 2013). For instance, in Vozar et al (2016), where the authors used a PD controller as the steering model for a teleoperated small robot, the control gains were hand-tuned for each delay value to reflect the effect of different time delays on the performance of human teleoperators. Note, however, this type of tuning can be performed only when human data are given.…”

“…According to recent analyses (Vozar, 2013; Vozar et al, 2016), speed and delay are the major parameters affecting human driver performance in teleoperation. To include both, six driving scenarios, including two speed levels and three delay values, were considered in this work for the task of path following in UGV teleoperation.…”

“…Because a human is in control of the vehicle in a teleoperation scheme, research studies are usually conducted with human-in-the-loop experiments (Vozar, Storms, & Tilbury, 2016), which provide high fidelity but are expensive and time-consuming. To enable the evaluation of UGV mobility without having to engage in human testing, the capability to conduct fully simulation-based studies is required, which necessitates human driver models.…”

“…There exist a few studies on modeling human performance in teleoperation for small mobile robots (Chen, Haas, & Barnes, 2007; Ritter, Kukreja, & Amant, 2007; Vozar, 2013; Vozar et al, 2016). For example, in Vozar (2013) and Vozar et al (2016), a proportional-derivative (PD) steering control model based on the projected lateral displacement was developed for teleoperating a small mobile robot in the presence of time delays.…”

“…There exist a few studies on modeling human performance in teleoperation for small mobile robots (Chen, Haas, & Barnes, 2007; Ritter, Kukreja, & Amant, 2007; Vozar, 2013; Vozar et al, 2016). For example, in Vozar (2013) and Vozar et al (2016), a proportional-derivative (PD) steering control model based on the projected lateral displacement was developed for teleoperating a small mobile robot in the presence of time delays. In another work (Ritter et al, 2007), the authors designed a user model based on the ACT-R cognitive architecture (Anderson et al, 2004; Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) and the SegMan perceptual-motor extension (Amant, Riedl, Ritter, & Reifers, 2005) to control a simple mobile robot through a teleoperation setting.…”