RELAY: A Futuristic Interface for Remote Driving

The remote control of vehicles, typically useful in hazardous situations, is a difficult and skilled task. Users experience great difficulty in performing relatively simple operations, such as avoiding obstacles and maintaining control of the device. This contrasts strongly with high user performance when controlling a local vehicle. We suggest that one reason for this is the absence of haptic feedback conveying the physical experiences of the vehicle, the forces that act upon it as it moves. To investigate this issue we have augmented a radiocontrolled car with sensors, and constructed a novel control handset that uses ungrounded haptic feedback to display the forces and torques experienced by the car as it is driven.