Semi-autonomous telerobotic assembly over high-latency networks

We report the development and a preliminary multi-user evaluation of an assisted teleoperation architecture for assembly tasks over high-latency networks. While such tasks still require human insight, there are often elements of these tasks which can be executed autonomously. Our architecture contextualizes a user's intended actions in a remote scene. It assists the user by performing the intended action more precisely based on the latest local scene model. We report the results of a multi-user study of nine participants to evaluate performance of this approach using a full-3D dynamic robotic simulation in a laboratory environment. The study required users to assemble part of a structure with 200 or 4000 milliseconds of time delay, with or without assistance from the reported system. For each condition, we evaluated performance based both on partial and final task completion times, and we estimated each user's workload with the NASA Task Load Index. The study showed that our architecture has the potential to increase feasibility of the task both with and without large telemetry delay and to enable users to complete elements of the task more rapidly. We also found that the assistance dramatically reduced the users' workload. We provide open-source implementations for all components of our system, which can be adapted to other robotic platforms.