Transparency in teleoperation

Transparency in teleoperation Proposal Number: 2007195 Amir Karniel and Ferdinando A. Mussa-Ivaldi Abstract for the final report (October 2008, September 2012).

In bilateral teleoperation, the operator manipulates a local robot that determines the motion of a remote robot and continuously receives delayed force feedback. The delay may cause instability, distorted perception, and distorted action.

Transparency is a measure of teleoperation system fidelity. The ideal teleoperation system is the identity channel, where there is no delay or distortion. During the last few decades, transparency measurements focused on analyzing the channel while neglecting the human operator. In this study we have concentrated on the human operator and considered the following three criteria of transparency: (i) Perceptual transparency: The human operator cannot distinguish between the actual channel and the identity channel.

(ii) Local motor transparency: The movement of the operator with the system is similar to his/her movements with an identity channel.

(iii) Remote transparency: The movement of the remote robot is similar to the movement that would result with the identity channel.

We have explored the perception of stiffness with delay, and developed a filter and a training protocol for the human operator such that after training and tuning, the resultant teleoperation will be perceptually and remotely transparent. Moreover, we have understood how the perceived stiffness of a surface depends upon the perception of its boundary. We have extended our model of perception to the operation f a laparoscopic device and we have investigated the representation of simultaneity in temporal or spatial coordinates within novel augmented reality environments.