Coordinate frames in robotic teleoperation

An important mode of human-robot interaction is teleoperation, in which a human operator directly controls a robot via hardware such as a joystick or mouse. Such control is not always easy, however, as the viewpoint of the human, the alignment of the input device, and the local coordinate frame of the robot are rarely all aligned. These discrepancies force the user to reconcile the involved coordinate frames during teleoperation. Therefore, the choice of coordinate frames is critical since an unintuitive coordinate frame mapping will likely lead to higher mental workload and reduced efficiency. We discuss this concern, describe the various difficulties involved with natural remote teleoperation of a robot, and report experiments that demonstrate the effects of using different frames of reference on task performance and user mental workload.