On-the-screen visual enhancements for a telerobotic vision system

Experimental results indicate that on-the-screen visual enhancements such as a vertical reference line, a stick figure model of the manipulator gripper and its projection, and a reference grid greatly improves the human performance of telemanipulation tasks, especially when objects to pick up lie on the robot base plane.

Abstract

Superimposition of visual enhancements on the video screen is described as a means of assisting the human operator in performing telemanipulation tasks while looking at video camera views. Since the video screen is two dimensional, it is in general difficult for the human operator to perceive three-dimensional information. Recent simulation studies reported that adding a vertical reference line from the manipulator hand to the robot base plane significantly improved human performances of telemanipulation tasks. In this paper, actual experiments with a 5-degree-of-freedom manipulator and a video frame grabber are presented. Experimental results indeed indicate that on-the-screen visual enhancements such as a vertical reference line, a stick figure model of the manipulator gripper and its projection, and a reference grid greatly improves the human performance of telemanipulation tasks, especially when objects to pick up lie on the robot base plane. When objects are arbitrarily positioned, an interactive scheme is used for defining a projection grid plane usin two camera views.