Towards a VR Evaluation Suite for Tactile Displays in Telerobotic Space Missions
Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/Report › Conference contribution › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Research and development of telerobotic systems supplemented by haptic feedback for future planetary exploration missions has gained significant importance in the past decade. Major space agencies endeavor to deploy such systems before sending humans to the surface of unknown or unexplored celestial bodies. Astronauts control these telerobotic systems from remote locations, such as an orbital space station. Haptic feedback for teleoperating the robots in outer space is extremely important, not only to improve user immersion and task performance, but also to improve our understanding of surface properties. At the same time, for spaceflight, making use of compact, light-weight and robust devices are preferred for precise tactile feedback from telemanipulation tasks. In this paper, we introduce “ViESTac”, a first attempt to develop a generic VR suite to be able to evaluate and compare fingertip-wearable tactile devices. Applications of such a suite include, but are not limited to allowing teleoperators to judiciously choose suitable tactile devices for a particular task. To account for the wide variety of existing fingertip-wearable tactile devices and their display capabilities, the suite contains a set of virtual scenarios to investigate different tactile properties of virtual objects. It also dedicates a virtual scenario to evaluate how tactile feedback may govern the accuracy of human positioning in standard tasks. This proposed suite is advocated by a pilot study with 13 participants and two distinct state-of-the-art tactile devices. Results of the study clearly indicate that the virtual suite can successfully cater to the need of evaluating and comparing fingertip-wearable tactile devices.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | 2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference |
| Publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
| Pages | 1-12 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| ISBN (electronic) | 9781665490320 |
| ISBN (print) | 978-1-6654-9033-7 |
| Publication status | Published - 11 Mar 2023 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Conference
| Title | 2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference |
|---|---|
| Abbreviated title | AEROCONF 2023 |
| Conference number | 44 |
| Duration | 4 - 11 March 2023 |
| Website | |
| Degree of recognition | International event |
| Location | Yellowstone Conference Center |
| City | Big Sky |
| Country | United States of America |
External IDs
| Scopus | 85160542852 |
|---|---|
| ORCID | /0000-0001-6870-5224/work/147142881 |
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- Space vehicles, Performance evaluation, Teleoperators, Three-dimensional displays, Space missions, Tactile sensors, Aerospace electronics