Haptic Intelligence

Naturalistic Vibrotactile Feedback Could Facilitate Telerobotic Assembly on Construction Sites

2023

Conference Paper

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Telerobotics is regularly used on construction sites to build large structures efficiently. A human operator remotely controls the construction robot under direct visual feedback, but visibility is often poor. Future construction robots that move autonomously will also require operator monitoring. Thus, we designed a wireless haptic feedback system to provide the operator with task-relevant mechanical information from a construction robot in real time. Our AiroTouch system uses an accelerometer to measure the robot end-effector's vibrations and uses off-the-shelf audio equipment and a voice-coil actuator to display them to the user with high fidelity. A study was conducted to evaluate how this type of naturalistic vibration feedback affects the observer's understanding of telerobotic assembly on a real construction site. Seven adults without construction experience observed a mix of manual and autonomous assembly processes both with and without naturalistic vibrotactile feedback. Qualitative analysis of their survey responses and interviews indicated that all participants had positive responses to this technology and believed it would be beneficial for construction activities.

Author(s): Yijie Gong and Bernard Javot and Anja Patricia Regina Lauer and Oliver Sawodny and Katherine J. Kuchenbecker
Book Title: Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC)
Pages: 169--175
Year: 2023
Month: July
Department(s): Haptic Intelligence
Research Project(s): Arm-Motion-Based Telerobotic Construction with Vibrotactile Feedback
Bibtex Type: Conference Paper (inproceedings)
Paper Type: Conference
DOI: 10.1109/WHC56415.2023.10224499
Address: Delft, The Netherlands
State: Published

BibTex 

@inproceedings{Gong23-WHC-Feedback,
  title = {Naturalistic Vibrotactile Feedback Could Facilitate Telerobotic Assembly on Construction Sites},
  author = {Gong, Yijie and Javot, Bernard and Lauer, Anja Patricia Regina and Sawodny, Oliver and Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC)},
  pages = {169--175},
  address = {Delft, The Netherlands},
  month = jul,
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/WHC56415.2023.10224499},
  month_numeric = {7}
}