Development and evaluation of a telepresence interface for teleoperation of a robot manipulator

Robots deployed in hostile environments, such as nuclear, chemical and bio-hazard areas, are usually teleoperated in a master-slave mode from a safe distance. Typically, the workspace of the manipulator (slave) is seen through one or more views of monoscopic cameras. Instead, we use here two camera feeds from the slave environment to create a stereo (3D) view for the operator. Moreover, the operator manipulates the slave robot using a haptic device as a master. Together, this visual and haptic immersion of the operator in the remote environment can be thought of as a telepresence interface. This interface can be accessed from anywhere through intranet /internet for remote operation. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a telepresence interface for teleoperation, and evaluate its effectiveness during teleoperation in four distinct modes of operation - monoscopic (M), monoscopic with haptic feedback (MH), stereoscopic (S), stereoscopic with haptic feedback (SH). Results point at obvious superiority of the SH mode of operation, although MH is not so bad either. This indicates the relative importance of haptic feedback in building a telepresence system.