Comparison between Two Mixed Reality Environments as a Teleoperation Interface

Abstract

An important aspect of teleoperation is situational awareness through visualization. The actual operation and control of a remote machine must be supported by an interface which provides enough information through visualization from a remote location to complete a task. This can be achieved with a Mixed Reality (MR) environment. The concept is to combine information from the real world and a virtual world. An experiment was conducted to assess the differences between two platforms and to determine interface features required to maximize operator performance and satisfaction. The result indicates that both mixed reality environments tested were suitable for teleoperation where sufficient information to perform the task could be modeled in the virtual world. However, one of the environments turned out to be superior where the task required information in the video but not modeled in the virtual environment. The preferred environment provided overlays on the video that were updated live as the model was manipulated where the other environment updated video overlays on completion of the manipulation.