Augmented Telepresence for Remote Inspection with Legged Robots

Abstract

In many applications, humans remotely control a robot through teleoperation, to augment its capabilities with the cognitive skills of humans. The arrival of mainstream head mounted displays (HMDs) and 360° cameras have brought about reduction in their size, increase in functionality as well as lowering of cost. This paper presents an augmented telepresence system using a HMD for remote operation of a legged robot via a web application. Low-cost and low-weight hardware were chosen to realise the system on a legged robot platform, but the web technologies used are device-agnostic and work efficiently across multiple platforms. A mock-up remote visual inspection test course was used to experimentally evaluate the HMD system by comparing performance with a fixed camera display approach. A total of 28 individual operators completed the test course with course completion performance recorded along with user feedback. The results show that the HMD increased the operator's perception of the remote environment but there are no significant task performance advantages using a HMD for remote inspection with legged robots.