Ecological Displays for Robot Interaction: A New Perspective

摘要

Most interfaces for robot control have focused on providing users with the most current information and giving status messages about what the robot is doing. While this may work for people who are already experienced in robotics, an alternative paradigm is needed for enabling new users to control robots effectively. Instead of approaching the problem as an issue of what information could be useful, the focus should be on presenting essential information in an intuitive way. One way to do this is to leverage perceptual cues that people are accustomed to using. By displaying information in such contexts, people are able to understand and use the interface more effectively. This paper presents an interface that allows users to navigate in 3-D worlds with integrated range and camera information. The interface supports teleoperation by placing the viewpoint behind the robot such that the robot appears in the user's view of the environment. The authors present results indicating a 17% increase in operator performance using the new interface with a simulated robot. Operators preferred the ecological display 4 to 1 over a standard interface. Preliminary results with a robot in the real world have yielded similar results. In addition, the authors have extended the original interface to allow users to view the environment from a continuous range of positions. This enables the user to find a perspective that supports the current task and to switch to other perspectives when their needs change.