Human-in-the-Loop Ocean Robotics
The Focus Group “Human-in-the-Loop Ocean Robotics” involves Hans Fischer Fellow Prof. Leila Takayama (University of California), her host Prof. Sami Haddadin (TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology) as well the TUM-IAS funded doctoral candidate Srinivasan Lakshminarayanan.
Ocean robots present many opportunities for industrial and scientific work, but they also present many challenges (e.g., teleoperation under high latency network conditions, very limited situation awareness for remote teleoperators). Our Focus Group is exploring ways to expand the state-of-the-art supporting human-in-the-loop control of autonomous underwater robots. Through system development and iterative user testing and design cycles, we are taking a human-centered approach to expanding the possibilities of deep sea ocean exploration. We are developing new ways of providing better situation awareness for remote teleoperators (e.g., visual and acoustic feedback about forces being experienced by remotely operated robots) and evaluating the impacts of those approaches upon human-robot task performance (e.g., efficiency of performing manipulation tasks, error rates) and user experiences (e.g., cognitive load, sense of presence). Our long-term goal is to develop better ways to enable broader populations of people to supervise and operate autonomous robots in remote locations such as the deep sea.
Dr. Takayama holds a TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Fellowship funded by Siemens AG.