Reducing Cognitive Workload in Telepresence Lunar - Martian Environments Through Audiovisual Feedback in Augmented Reality

Navigating through an unknown, and perhaps resource-constrained environment, such as Lunar terrain or through a disaster region can be detrimental - e.g. both physically and cognitively exhausting. Difficulties during navigation can cost time, operational resources, or even a life. To this end, the interaction with a robotic exploration system in lunar or Martian environments could be key to successful exploration extravehicular activities (X-EVA). Through the use of augmented reality (AR) we can afford an astronaut with various capabilities. In particular, we focus on two: (1) The ability to obtain and display information on their current position, on important locations, and on essential objects in an augmented space. (2) The ability to control an exploratory robot system, or smart robotic tools using AR interfaces. We present our ongoing development of such AR robot control interfaces and the feedback system being implemented. This work extends the augmented reality robot navigation and audio spatial feedback components presented at the 2020 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) SUITS Challenge.