Investigating spatial guidance for a cooperative handheld robot

Abstract

In this paper we address the question of how to provide feedback information to guide users of a handheld robotic device when performing a spatial exploration task. We consider various feedback methods for communicating a five degree of freedom target pose to a user including a stereoscopic VR display, a monocular see-through AR display and a 2D screen as well as robot arm gesturing. The spatial exploration task with the handheld robot arm was compared against a baseline of a passive handheld wand. We compared the performance of each of the methods with 21 volunteers using a repeated measures ANOVA experimental design, and recorded users' opinions via a NASA Task Load Index Survey. The robot assisted reaching feedback methods significantly outperform manual reaching with the wand for all three visual feedback methods. However, there is little difference between each of the three visual feedback methods when using the robot. The completion time of the task varies with changing difficulty when using the wand but remains stable when assisted by the robot. These results convey useful information for the design of cooperative handheld robots.