Effect of robot operation by a camera with the eye tracking control

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a control system for tele-operation of robots using an eye tracking control and confirm its effectiveness by experiments. A camera mounted on the robot provides a view to an operator via a monitor screen. The screen is divided into 3×3 grids. The robot stops when the gaze is on the center grid cell. When the gaze is on the other gird cells, the robot moves to the direction with a pre-defined constant speed. We apply the developed system to control a laparoscope holder robot and a crawler-type rescue robot. In the laparoscope holder robot, no sensor needs to be attached on the operator with the system while a gyroscope is mounted on the conventional system. In the tele-operation of the rescue robot, the control system is used to view the robot from an operation room. The travel time of a narrow pilot road becomes shorter in the proposed control system than the verbal instruction to the camera operator.