Evaluation of remote interface component alternatives for teaching tele-robotic operation

The Internet developments as well as the increase in PCs' capabilities and bandwidth capacity have made remote learning through the internet a convenient and practical learning preference, leading to a variety of new learning interfaces and methods. This chapter discusses a remote learning study conducted at the Computer-Integrated-Manufacturing (CIM) Laboratory in Tel-Aviv University. The goal is to provide remote end-users with an interface that enables them to teleoperate a robotic arm in conditions as close as possible to hands-on operation in the laboratory. This study evaluates the contribution of different interface components to the overall performance and the learning ability of potential end-users. Based on predefined experimental tasks, the study compares alternative interface designs for teleoperation. The three performance measures of the robot operation task are (1) the number of steps that are required to complete the given task, (2) the number of errors during the execution stage, and (3) the improvement rate of users. Guidelines for a better design of remote learning interfaces in robotics are provided based on the experimental results.