Tele-Operating USAR Robots

Abstract

Successful tele-operation in Urban Search and Rescue depends on operators’ perceptual judgment accuracy (e.g., judging whether a robot can pass through an opening) and driving performance (e.g., driving the robot through an opening without collision). Previous research (Jones, Johnson, & Schmidlin, 2011; Schmidlin, 2014) tested operators’ perceptual judgments when tele-operating through apertures of varying widths. The current study is an exploratory reanalysis of the driving performance data collected in Jones et al. (2011) and Schmidlin (2014). Driving performance was defined as the proportion of times an operator passed through an aperture without colliding with the aperture. As aperture size increased, the proportion of apertures passed increased in a predictable quadratic pattern. Proportion passed scores were significantly higher at the end of the experiments, after approximately 1 hr of practice, than at the beginning of the experiments. We could not determine whether 1 hr of practice was sufficient for operators to reach maximum driving performance.