Integrating Open-World Shared Control in Immersive Avatars

Teleoperated avatar robots allow people to transport their manipulation skills to environments that may be difficult or dangerous to work in. Current systems are able to give operators direct control of many components of the robot to immerse them in the remote environment, but operators still struggle to complete tasks as competently as they could in person. We present a framework for incorporating open-world shared control into avatar robots to combine the benefits of direct and shared control. This framework preserves the fluency of our avatar interface by minimizing obstructions to the operator’s view and using the same interface for direct, shared, and fully autonomous control. In a human subjects study (N=19), we find that operators using this framework complete a range of tasks significantly more quickly and reliably than those that do not.

I. Introduction

Teleoperation allows humans to sense and act in remote locations that may be hazardous or difficult to access. Recently, several groups have developed robot avatars [4], [21], [22], [29] that provide immersive interfaces for operators to control an entire robot body and transport their presence to a remote location. These systems have proven that avatars enable novice operators to intuitively inspect, navigate, and manipulate the remote environment, but even state-of-the-art systems lag behind human proficiency [12].