Toward Remote Teleoperation with Eye and Hand: A First Experimental Study

Abstract

Abstract — Despite the continuous improvement of master interfaces, distant robot teleoperation remains a challenging task. In many applications, including robot-assisted single port laparoscopic surgery and NOTES, the operator has only an indirect vision of the remote environment, provided by a video camera usually mounted on the robot end-effector itself and displayed on a monitor. Driving such an eye-in-hand robot smoothly in real time is known to be difficult. Even a skilled user will likely generate a succession of independent translations and rotations punctuated by frequent stops, in order to keep the target inside the camera field of view. Since one can assume that she/he will look most of the time at the target on the video monitor, our idea is to gather additional information on the remote target with an eye-tracking device, and to use it to facilitate teleoperation. This paper introduces a novel remote