Testing the Usefulness of a Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) Camera in Human-Robot Interactions

Abstract

Mobile robots can be used in situations and environments that are dull, dirty, or dangerous, allowing the operator to interact with the environment from a safe and convenient distance. To improve the usefulness of these robots, pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras are often used. This paper presents a user-study comparing the usefulness of robots with stationary and PTZ cameras in a search task utilizing both a traditional interface and an augmented-virtuality 3D interface. The results from the experiments suggest that with the traditional interface the PTZ camera and stationary camera have similar performance whereas with the 3D interface the PTZ camera improves performance.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Burke

J. L

Murphy

R. R.

Coovert

M. D.

Riddle

D. L.

(2004). Moonlight in Miami: A Field Study of Human-Robot Interaction in the Context of an Urban Search and Rescue Disaster Response Training Exercise. Human-Computer Interaction, 19, 85–116.

Konolige

(2004). Large-Scale Map-Making. In Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)..

Nielsen

C. W.

Goodrich

M. A.

Rupper

R. J.

(2005). Towards Facilitating the Use of a pan-tilt camera on a mobile robot. In Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Workshop on Robots and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN)..

Nielsen

C. W.

Goodrich

M. A.

(2006). Comparing the Usefulness of Video and Map Information in Navigation Tasks. In Proceedings of the Human-Robot Interaction Conference (HRI)..

Nielsen

C. W.

Ricks

B. W.

Goodrich

M. A.

Bruemmer

D. J.

Few

D. A.

Walton

M. C.

(2004). Snapshots for Semantic Maps. In Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC)..

Ricks

B. W.

Nielsen

C. W.

Goodrich

M. A.

(2004). Ecological Displays for robot interaction: A new perspective. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)..

Yanco

H. A.

Drury

J.L.

(2004). “Where am I?” Acquiring Situation Awareness Using a Remote Robot Platform. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics..