Evaluating Haptic Feedback for Vehicle Safety in Field Robotics

EPSRC : Mr Joshua Brown : EP/S515188/1

Teleoperation is a field in robotics concerned with the real-time control of remotely acting robots. Such systems may be mobile or fixed-base, aerial, terrestrial or marine, and sometimes incorporate some autonomous functionality to take over either mundane or highly complex tasks from the human operator. Teleoperated robots offer users the maximum possible degree of control and oversight over pre-programmed and fully-autonomous robots, but their overall effectiveness is limited by the attentiveness and capability of the operator. This negates one of the most significant benefits of modern robotics - the elimination of human error.

This project aims to evaluate a novel device of my own design and making which is able to communicate information about the robot's state to a human operator via haptic feedback, specifically vibration. For example, hazards such as loose terrain or a steep incline may not be well reported to the operator via a camera feed, and blind spots are inevitable in real world systems. The focus of my PhD is the design of this novel control device and its application in making robot teleoperation safer for the robotic vehicle and less prone to errors. Existing research in this area remains limited and the apporoach my work takes to report hazards via carefully controlled vibrations that mimic the movement and forces experienced by a robot has not been done before.

The first two years of my PhD have been concerned with the design, construction and lab-based evaluation of this novel haptic device. My third year, in which I hope to undertake this project, aims to evaluate this device's utility in mobile robot teleoperation tasks in the ground (off-road, rough terrain) and aquatic domains. This project will give me access to large-scale off-road and underwater robots and the facilities to operate and test them. There is no existing research that considers applying haptic feedback to underwater robot control. These do not exist in the UK, meaning my original research proposal relied on very small model robots and computer simulations. Whilst these are useful tools, being able to access the real world systems available in Canada via my proposed supervisor would add a great deal of value to my PhD research and the results I am able to obtain from it.

My proposed project in Canada will progress in two phases. The first phase will take advantage of my proposed supervisor's unique combination of expertise in mobile robotics and human perception, to conduct experiments to determine how vibrating haptic feedback can best be used to represent or recreate hazardous situations a mobile robot might encounter in real world use. These results will then very quickly inform the parameters for a second study, using the large scale off-road and aquatic robots to complete tasks that, by design, will involve navigating certain environmental hazards such as loose terrain, obstacles, very uneven ground, strong water currents, etc. The value of haptic feedback in helping the human operators to navigate these hazards will be assessed.