The effects of operator spatial perception and sensory feedback on human-robot teleoperation performance

Teleoperation requires a complex combination of the operator's cognitive, perceptual, and motor skills. Our experiment tested the ability of subjects to teleoperate a remote robot under different conditions of increasing sensory feedback. We also evaluated each operator's spatial perception skills using a battery of tests to understand the effect of spatial perception on the operator's ability to perform the teleoperation task, The experiment showed that the spatial ability of an operator-as reflected by a test battery of two spatial recognition and two spatial manipulation tests-was significantly correlated with the ability to teleoperate the robot through a maze. Surprisingly, providing different combinations of visual, auditory, and vibrotactile feedback to the operator did not significantly change performance. However, there was an interaction between spatial ability and feedback condition that affected teleoperation performance.