TY - JOUR
T1 - Visual augmentation of live-streaming images in virtual reality to enhance teleoperation of unmanned ground vehicles
AU - Luo, Yiming
AU - Wang, Jialin
AU - Pan, Yushan
AU - Luo, Shan
AU - Irani, Pourang
AU - Liang, Hai Ning
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2024 Luo, Wang, Pan, Luo, Irani and Liang.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - First-person view (FPV) technology in virtual reality (VR) can offer in-situ environments in which teleoperators can manipulate unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). However, non-experts and expert robot teleoperators still have trouble controlling robots remotely in various situations. For example, obstacles are not easy to avoid when teleoperating UGVs in dim, dangerous, and difficult-to-access areas with environmental obstacles, while unstable lighting can cause teleoperators to feel stressed. To support teleoperators’ ability to operate UGVs efficiently, we adopted construction yellow and black lines from our everyday life as a standard design space and customised the Sobel algorithm to develop VR-mediated teleoperations to enhance teleoperators’ performance. Our results show that our approach can improve user performance on avoidance tasks involving static and dynamic obstacles and reduce workload demands and simulator sickness. Our results also demonstrate that with other adjustment combinations (e.g., removing the original image from edge-enhanced images with a blue filter and yellow edges), we can reduce the effect of high-exposure performance in a dark environment on operation accuracy. Our present work can serve as a solid case for using VR to mediate and enhance teleoperation operations with a wider range of applications.
AB - First-person view (FPV) technology in virtual reality (VR) can offer in-situ environments in which teleoperators can manipulate unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). However, non-experts and expert robot teleoperators still have trouble controlling robots remotely in various situations. For example, obstacles are not easy to avoid when teleoperating UGVs in dim, dangerous, and difficult-to-access areas with environmental obstacles, while unstable lighting can cause teleoperators to feel stressed. To support teleoperators’ ability to operate UGVs efficiently, we adopted construction yellow and black lines from our everyday life as a standard design space and customised the Sobel algorithm to develop VR-mediated teleoperations to enhance teleoperators’ performance. Our results show that our approach can improve user performance on avoidance tasks involving static and dynamic obstacles and reduce workload demands and simulator sickness. Our results also demonstrate that with other adjustment combinations (e.g., removing the original image from edge-enhanced images with a blue filter and yellow edges), we can reduce the effect of high-exposure performance in a dark environment on operation accuracy. Our present work can serve as a solid case for using VR to mediate and enhance teleoperation operations with a wider range of applications.
KW - edge enhancement
KW - teleoperation
KW - unmanned ground vehicles
KW - virtual reality
KW - vision augmentation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85206981040&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/frvir.2024.1230885
DO - 10.3389/frvir.2024.1230885
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85206981040
SN - 2673-4192
VL - 5
JO - Frontiers in Virtual Reality
JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality
M1 - 1230885
ER -