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A Design Space of Control Coordinate Systems in Telemanipulation

Yeping Wang, Pragathi Praveena, Michael Gleicher

TL;DR

The key insight is that there is a small set of meaningful directions in the remote environment for each axis of the input device, which can be defined by choosing a direction in the remote environment for each axis of the input device.

Abstract

Teleoperation systems map operator commands from an input device into some coordinate frame in the remote environment. This frame, which we call a control coordinate system, should be carefully chosen as it determines how operators should move to get desired robot motions. While specific choices made by individual systems have been described in prior work, a design space, i.e., an abstraction that encapsulates the range of possible options, has not been codified. In this paper, we articulate a design space of control coordinate systems, which can be defined by choosing a direction in the remote environment for each axis of the input device. Our key insight is that there is a small set of meaningful directions in the remote environment. Control coordinate systems in prior works can be organized by the alignments of their axes with these directions and new control coordinate systems can be designed by choosing from these directions. We also provide three design criteria to reason about the suitability of control coordinate systems for various scenarios. To demonstrate the utility of our design space, we use it to organize prior systems and design control coordinate systems for three scenarios that we assess through human-subject experiments. Our results highlight the promise of our design space as a conceptual tool to assist system designers to design control coordinate systems that are effective and intuitive for operators.

A Design Space of Control Coordinate Systems in Telemanipulation

TL;DR

The key insight is that there is a small set of meaningful directions in the remote environment for each axis of the input device, which can be defined by choosing a direction in the remote environment for each axis of the input device.

Abstract

Teleoperation systems map operator commands from an input device into some coordinate frame in the remote environment. This frame, which we call a control coordinate system, should be carefully chosen as it determines how operators should move to get desired robot motions. While specific choices made by individual systems have been described in prior work, a design space, i.e., an abstraction that encapsulates the range of possible options, has not been codified. In this paper, we articulate a design space of control coordinate systems, which can be defined by choosing a direction in the remote environment for each axis of the input device. Our key insight is that there is a small set of meaningful directions in the remote environment. Control coordinate systems in prior works can be organized by the alignments of their axes with these directions and new control coordinate systems can be designed by choosing from these directions. We also provide three design criteria to reason about the suitability of control coordinate systems for various scenarios. To demonstrate the utility of our design space, we use it to organize prior systems and design control coordinate systems for three scenarios that we assess through human-subject experiments. Our results highlight the promise of our design space as a conceptual tool to assist system designers to design control coordinate systems that are effective and intuitive for operators.
Paper Structure (32 sections, 4 equations, 4 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 32 sections, 4 equations, 4 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Control Coordinate Systems in Telemanipulation
  4. Visual-Motor Misalignments
  5. Telemanipulation with Low-Dimensional Input Devices
  6. Design Space
  7. Control Coordinate Systems
  8. Choices for Directions
  9. Organizing Existing Control Coordinate Systems
  10. Design Criteria
  11. Summary
  12. Case Studies
  13. Pick-and-Place with VR Controller
  14. Pick-and-Place with Mouse
  15. Tracing with Mouse
  16. ...and 17 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Visualization of some control coordinate systems in prior works. Red, green, and blue axes represent the directions mapped from the input device right (x-axis), forward (y-axis), and up (z-axis), respectively. Control coordinate systems A and B are designed for 3D input devices; C and D are for 2D input devices. A. Orbit controlabi2016visualbaaberg2016adaptivetalha2019preliminary - The control coordinate system moves on an imaginary sphere, whose radius is controlled by the blue axis. B. Pour task framequere2020shared - Vertical inputs move the bottle vertically up and down (blue arrow). Inputs along other two axes tilt the bottle (red and green) to finish the pouring task. C. Spray task framemower2019comparing - 2D inputs are mapped to the surface to be sprayed. The figure shows a tunnel surface that is curved along the vertical direction. D. View-dependent framenotheis2014evaluation - The control coordinate system is a plane formed by two axes chosen from the world frame. The two axes must form an acute angle with the camera image plane.
  • Figure 2: A. A hybrid frame that is constructed by combining the camera right axis and the upright direction. B. A hybrid frame that is formulated by projecting camera axes onto a plane.
  • Figure 3: We conducted three case studies in which we applied the choices and reasoning afforded by the design space to design control coordinate systems for various telemanipulation scenarios. The control coordinate system designed in each case study was assessed in an independent human subject experiment. The designed hybrid frames were experimental conditions, and the robot frame, camera frame, and task frame were selected as control conditions. In the visualization, red, green, and blue arrows represent the directions mapped from the input device's right, forward and up axes, respectively.
  • Figure 4: Box and whisker plots of data from the performance and user perception measures for each experiment. The top and bottom of each box represent the first and third quartiles, and the line inside each box is the statistical median of the data. The length of the box is defined as the interquartile range (IQR). The whiskers are with maximum 1.5 IQR. Horizontal lines indicate significant Tukey HSD test results. TLX means NASA Task Load Index.