Hybrid head mounted/surround display for telexistence/telepresence and behavior navigation

Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) are the most popular devices for virtual reality, telexistence/telepresence humanoid operation, and remote behavior navigation. Telexistence/telepresence robot operation is an advanced teleoperation, enabling a human operator to perform remote dexterous manipulation tasks while having the feeling of being present in the remote environment. Behavior navigation is a novel technology that allows an expert to navigate a remote unskilled cooperator to perform general tasks. Since it is difficult to realize a large field of view (FOV) with an HMD, this has led to the development of immersive surround display systems. However, the fact that the operator's arms sometimes conceal the screen image of the surround display presents a serious drawback. To improve the performance of robot operation or remote behavior navigation in unknown environments, we propose the simultaneous utilization of a slimline HMD for central vision and a surround display for peripheral vision. Users of this novel display system can see the relatively high-resolution image on the display screens of the HMD, and their arms do not conceal the HMD image. In addition, users can see the large FOV image on the surround display around the HMD, although this may still be concealed by the user's arms. This enables full utilization of the natural and large FOV image. In this paper, we present the concept of a hybrid head mounted/surround display system, describe the configuration of a prototype setup, and present the results of a preliminary experiment.