Despite advances in computational cognition, there are many cyber-physical systems where human supervision and control is desirable. One pertinent example is the control of a robot arm, which can be found in both humanoid and commercial ground robots. Current control mechanisms require the user to look at several screens of varying perspective on the robot, then give commands through a joystick-like mechanism. This control paradigm fails to provide the human operator with an intuitive state feedback, resulting in awkward and slow behavior and underutilization of the robot's physical capabilities. To overcome this bottleneck, we introduce a new human-machine interface that extends the operator's proprioception by exploiting sensory substitution. Humans have a proprioceptive sense that provides us information on how our bodies are configured in space without having to directly observe our appendages. We constructed a wearable device with vibrating actuators on the forearm, where frequency of vibration corresponds to the spatial configuration of a robotic arm. The goal of this interface is to provide a means to communicate proprioceptive information to the teleoperator. Ultimately we will measure the change in performance (time taken to complete the task) achieved by the use of this interface.

Date Published: 20 April 2016
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9803, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016, 980304 (20 April 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2219534

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9803:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016
Jerome P. Lynch, Editor(s)