Depth-enhanced mobile robot teleguide based on laser images

Abstract 3D stereoscopic visualization may provide a user with higher comprehension of remote environment in teleoperation when compared to 2D viewing. Works in the literature have addressed the contribution of stereo vision to improve perception of some depth cues often for abstract tasks, and it is hard to find contributions specifically addressing mobile robot teleguide. The authors of this paper have investigated stereoscopic viewing in mobile robot teleguide based on video images in a previous work and pointed out advantages of stereo viewing in this type of application as well as shortcomings inherent to the use of visual sensor, e.g. image transmission delay. The proposed investigation aims at testing mobile robot teleguide based on a different sensor: the laser sensor. The use of laser is expected to solve some problems related to visual sensor while maintaining the advantage of having stereoscopic visualization of a remote environment. A usability evaluation is proposed to assess system performance. The evaluation runs under the same setup of the previous study so to have an experimental outcome comparable to the previous one. The evaluation involves several users and two different 3D visualization technologies. The results show a strong improvement in users’ performance when mobile robot teleguide based on laser sensor is (depth-) enhanced by stereo viewing. Some differences are detected between the use of laser and visual sensor which are discussed.