A telerobotic Human/Robot Interface for mobile manipulators: A study of human operator performance

Abstract

This paper describes a Human/Robot Interface (HRI) for wireless remotely controlled autonomous mobile manipulators by human operators. Indeed, the developed interface provides all the information of the sensors equipping the robot. The human operator can control all the actuators of the mobile manipulator at the same time (mobile base and manipulator simultaneously) or separately (manipulator or mobile base), depending on the requirements of the assigned task. The execution of some manufacturing tasks accomplished by the RobuTER/ULM mobile manipulator in indoor environment, demonstrates that the proposed telerobotic interface was able (i) to reduce the workload of the operator, (ii) to increase the effectiveness of his work while (iii) improving the completion time of the tasks and (iv) the failures rate.