“Moving to the centre”: A gaze-driven remote camera control for teleoperation

In general, conventional control interfaces such as joysticks, switches, and wheels are predominantly used in teleoperation. However, operators normally have to control multiple complex devices simultaneously. For example, controlling a rock breaker and a remote camera at the same time in mining teleoperation. This overloads the operator’s control capability of using hands, increases workload and reduces productivity.We present a novel gaze-driven remote camera control with an implemented prototype, which follows a simple and natural design principle: “Whatever you look at on the screen, it moves to the centre!”.A user study of modeled hands-busy experiment has been conducted, comparing the performance of using gaze-driven control and traditional joystick control through both objective measures and subjective measures. The experimental results clearly show the gaze-driven control significantly outperformed the conventional joystick control.

Using conventional control interfaces in teleoperation such as joysticks can overload an operator’s hand control capability as they usually have multiple devices to control. For example, controlling a rock breaker and a remote camera simultaneously in mining teleoperation. A novel gaze-driven remote camera control is developed to solve such hands-busy problems in teleoperation, which follows a simple and natural design principle: “Whatever you look at on the screen, it moves to the centre!”.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slideResearch highlights
► Development of a novel gaze-driven remote camera control for hands-busy and attention switch problems in teleoperation settings.
► Design of a functional physical model for a real world setting where it is difficult to have direct access to real users.
► User evaluation of comparing gaze-driven camera control with conventional joystick control through both objective measures and subjective measures.
► Results from the evaluation show more advantages using the gaze-driven camera control, and that it is an effective solution for the hands-busy and attention switch problem.