Sharing but Not Caring: Similar Outcomes for Shared Control and Switching Control in Telepresence-Robot Navigation

Abstract-- T elepresence robots enable users to interact with remote environments, but efficient and intuitive navigation remains a challenge. In this work, we developed and evaluated a shared control method, in which the robot navigates autonomously while allowing users to affect the path generation to better suit their needs. We compared this with control switching, where users toggle between direct and automated control. We hypothesized that shared control would maintain efficiency comparable to control switching while potentially reducing user workload. The results of two consecutive user studies (each with final sample of n = 20) showed that shared control does not degrade navigation efficiency, but did not show a significant reduction in task load compared to control switching. Further research is needed to explore the underlying factors that influence user preference and performance in these control systems. Telepresence robots represent a class of robotic systems in which a mobile robot is equipped with a camera streaming live video to a display that is watched by a remote user. These robots have already found a wide domain of applications ranging from business meetings and factory tours to personal events such as graduations and weddings. Furthermore, immersive-telepresence robots allow a panoramic camera stream to be watched by a remote user via a head-mounted display (HMD). These systems carry great potential in improving the user interaction with the remote environment, which is found to be lacking in the commercial systems [1].