This paper introduces an emerging motion planning problem by considering a human that is immersed into the viewing perspective of a remote robot. The challenge is to make the experience both effective (such as delivering a sense of presence) and comfortable (such as avoiding adverse sickness symptoms, including nausea). We refer to this challenging new area as human perception-optimized planning and propose a general multiobjective optimization framework that can be instantiated in many envisioned scenarios. We then consider a specific VR telepresence task as a case of human perception-optimized planning, in which we simulate a robot that sends 360 video to a remote user to be viewed through a head-mounted display. In this particular task, we plan trajectories that minimize VR sickness (and thereby maximize comfort). An A* type method is used to create a Pareto-optimal collection of piecewise linear trajectories while taking into account criteria that improve comfort. We conducted a study with human subjects touring a virtual museum, in which paths computed by our algorithm are compared against a reference RRT-based trajectory. Generally, users suffered less from VR sickness and preferred the paths created by the presented algorithm.
In this paper, we show that unwinding the rotations of a user immersed in a telepresence robot is preferred and may increase the feeling of presence or "being there". By immersive telepresence, we mean a scenario where a user wearing a head-mounted display embodies a mobile robot equipped with a 360° camera in another location, such that the user can move the robot and communicate with people around it. By unwinding the rotations, the user never perceives rotational motion through the head-mounted display while staying stationary, avoiding sensory mismatch which causes a major part of VR sickn…
The Graduate University for Advance Studies, SOKENDAI（综合研究大学院大学）；National Institute of Informatics, NII（国立信息学研究所）
Nowadays, a community starts to find the need for human presence in an alternative way, there has been tremendous research and development in advancing telepresence robots. People tend to feel closer and more comfortable with telepresence robots as many senses a human presence in robots. In general, many people feel the sense of agency from the face of a robot, but some telepresence robots without arm and body motions tend to give a sense of human presence. It is important to identify and configure how the telepresence robots affect a sense of presence and agency to people by including human f…
University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas (CIMAT)（数学研究中心（CIMAT））
This paper considers how the motions of a telepresence robot moving autonomously affect a person immersed in the robot through a head-mounted display. In particular, we explore the preference, comfort, and naturalness of elements of piecewise linear paths compared to the same elements on a smooth path. In a user study, thirty-six subjects watched panoramic videos of three different paths through a simulated museum in virtual reality and responded to questionnaires regarding each path. Preference for a particular path was influenced the most by comfort, forward speed, and characteristics of the…
We propose unwinding the rotations experienced by the user of an immersive telepresence robot to improve comfort and reduce VR sickness of the user. By immersive telepresence we refer to a situation where a 360\textdegree~camera on top of a mobile robot is streaming video and audio into a head-mounted display worn by a remote user possibly far away. Thus, it enables the user to be present at the robot's location, look around by turning the head and communicate with people near the robot. By unwinding the rotations of the camera frame, the user's viewpoint is not changed when the robot rotates.…
University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Centro de Investigacion en Matematicas (CIMAT)（数学研究中心 (CIMAT)）
In this paper, we analyze how different path aspects affect a user's experience, mainly VR sickness and overall comfort, while immersed in an autonomously moving telepresence robot through a virtual reality headset. In particular, we focus on how the robot turns and the distance it keeps from objects, with the goal of planning suitable trajectories for an autonomously moving immersive telepresence robot in mind; rotational acceleration is known for causing the majority of VR sickness, and distance to objects modulates the optical flow. We ran a within-subjects user study (n = 36, women = 18) i…
School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学信息学院）
Assessing human performance in robotic scenarios such as those seen in telepresence and teleoperation has always been a challenging task. With the recent spike in mixed reality technologies and the subsequent focus by researchers, new pathways have opened in elucidating human perception and maximising overall immersion. Yet with the multitude of different assessment methods in evaluating operator performance in virtual environments within the field of HCI and HRI, inter-study comparability and transferability are limited. In this short paper, we present a brief overview of existing methods in …
Current advances in the development of autonomous cars suggest that driverless cars may see wide-scale deployment in the near future. Research by both industry and academia is driven by potential benefits of this new technology, including reductions in fatalities and improvements in traffic and fuel efficiency as well as greater mobility for people who will or cannot drive cars themselves. A deciding factor for the adoption of self-driving cars besides safety will be the comfort of the passengers. This report looks at cost functions currently used in motion planning methods for autonomous on-r…
State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton（纽约州立大学宾汉姆顿分校）
Mobile telepresence robots (MTRs) allow people to navigate and interact with a remote environment that is in a place other than the person's true location. Thanks to the recent advances in 360 degree vision, many MTRs are now equipped with an all-degree visual perception capability. However, people's visual field horizontally spans only about 120 degree of the visual field captured by the robot. To bridge this observability gap toward human-MTR shared autonomy, we have developed a framework, called GHAL360, to enable the MTR to learn a goal-oriented policy from reinforcements for guiding human…
Unwinding Rotations Reduces VR Sickness in Nonsimulated Immersive Telepresence
Wrocław University of Science and Technology（沃拉夫大学科学与技术学院）；University of Oulu（奥卢大学）；Maastricht University（马斯特里赫特大学）；University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）
We outline the design and construction of novel robotic arms using machine perception, convolutional neural networks, and symbolic AI for logical control and affordance indexing. We describe our robotic arms built with a humanlike mechanical configuration and aesthetic, with 28 degrees of freedom, touch sensors, and series elastic actuators. The arms were modelled in Roodle and Gazebo with URDF models, as well as Unity, and implement motion control solutions for solving live games of Baccarat (the casino card game), rock paper scissors, handshaking, and drawing. This includes live interactions…
SAP-CoPE: Social-Aware Planning using Cooperative Pose Estimation with Infrastructure Sensor Nodes
Mechanical and Mechatronics Eng. Department, University of Waterloo（机械与机电工程系，滑铁库大学）；Department of Data and Systems Engineering, University of Hong Kong（数据与系统工程系，香港大学）；Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Alberta（机械工程系，阿尔伯塔大学）
German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心（DLR））；Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院（KIT））；University of Twente (UT)（特文特大学（UT））；Technical University of Munich (TUM)（慕尼黑工业大学（TUM））
This article presents a novel telepresence system for advancing aerial manipulation in dynamic and unstructured environments. The proposed system not only features a haptic device, but also a virtual reality (VR) interface that provides real-time 3D displays of the robot's workspace as well as a haptic guidance to its remotely located operator. To realize this, multiple sensors namely a LiDAR, cameras and IMUs are utilized. For processing of the acquired sensory data, pose estimation pipelines are devised for industrial objects of both known and unknown geometries. We further propose an active…
End-to-End Humanoid Robot Safe and Comfortable Locomotion Policy
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)（香港科技大学（广州））；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Lab., Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy（人机交互实验室，意大利理工学院）
Self-Perception Versus Objective Driving Behavior: Subject Study of Lateral Vehicle Guidance
Institute for Driver Assistance and Connected Mobility, University of Applied Science Kempten（肯普滕应用科学大学驾驶辅助与互联移动研究所）；Department of Automotive Engineering, Technical University Berlin（柏林工业大学汽车工程系）
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Ben-Gurion University of the Negev（内盖夫本古里安大学工业工程与管理系）；Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems (AASS) Örebro University（厄勒布鲁大学应用自主传感器系统中心 (AASS)）
Caregivers in eldercare can benefit from telepresence robots that allow them to perform a variety of tasks remotely. In order for such robots to be operated effectively and efficiently by non-technical users, it is important to examine if and how the robotic system's level of automation (LOA) impacts their performance. The objective of this work was to develop suitable LOA modes for a mobile robotic telepresence (MRP) system for eldercare and assess their influence on users' performance, workload, awareness of the environment and usability at two different levels of task complexity. For this p…
The Impact of VR and 2D Interfaces on Human Feedback in Preference-Based Robot Learning
Humanoid Robots Lab, University of Bonn, Germany（波恩大学人形机器人实验室）；Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden（皇家理工学院机器人、感知与学习部门）；Robotics Institute Germany（德国机器人研究所）；The Lamarr Institute, Bonn, Germany（德国波恩拉玛尔研究所）；Center for Robotics, University of Bonn, Germany（德国波恩机器人中心）
