Comparative analysis of 3-D robot teleoperation interfaces with novice users.

Being able to act remotely in our homes could be very useful in providing various services such as surveillance and remote interventions, which are key features for telehomecare applications. In addition to navigation and environmental challenges that a telepresence robot would face in home settings, the system requires an appropriate teleoperation interface for safe and efficient usage by novice users. This paper describes the design criteria and characterizes visualization and control modalities of user interfaces with a real robot. By considering the user's needs along with the current state of the art in teleoperation interfaces, two novel mixed-reality visualization modalities are compared with standard video-centric and map-centric perspectives. We report teleoperation trials under six different task scenarios with a sample of 37 novice operators in homelike conditions. The results based on three quantitative metrics and one qualitative metric outline under which conditions the novel mixed-reality visualization modalities significantly improve the performance of novice users.