Interfaces for Generating Flow in Teleoperation: game-based interaction design to improve teleoperator engagement and focus

遥操作界面使人们能够远程控制机器人完成各种任务，如拍摄，消防，工业设备检查和维护。这可以实现增加的可访问性（例如，不要求身体适合工作）和安全（例如，社会距离）。然而，从长远来看，遥操作仍然很难安全地进行，高达70%的事故归因于人为错误：机器人控制和传感器显示的困难将导致操作员误解机器人的情况或如何控制它，导致碰撞，操作员压力或其他事故。远程操作界面需要更好地设计以支持操作员-减轻压力并提高注意力以减少错误。我建议建立界面，以鼓励增加远程操作者的注意力，参与度和进步感，也就是说，一种流动的状态，通俗地说就是“在区域中”。“流动的好处将有助于提高操作员的表现和降低压力，但目前还不清楚如何设计界面，鼓励流动的远程操作。心流理论研究发现，将一个人的技能与适当的挑战水平相匹配，有助于鼓励心流状态。在像视频游戏这样的虚拟设置中，可以通过校准虚拟挑战的难度来设计心流，但是在真实的世界和不受控制的动态情况下，心流的状态可能难以创建和维持。需要进行新的研究，以了解现有的全虚拟视频游戏技术如何适应现实世界的遥操作限制，以及如何创建新技术来改善遥操作人员的安全和健康。我的团队的短期目标是设计能够在远程操作中利用心流优势的技术-我们将通过研究如何为操作员构建、呈现和校准挑战，如何承认和奖励克服这些挑战，以及如何动态测量心流来实现这一目标。在这项研究期间，我的HQP将开发界面设计，评估，机器人技术，与尖端平台合作的技能，并在领先的国际场所发表。我的研究计划的长期目标是建立支持遥操作性能的接口，并通过塑造操作员的经验来减少压力。拟议的研究将通过开发界面来实现这一目标，这些界面鼓励操作员流动以提高关键任务的性能，并改变操作员如何体验长时间的远程操作会话（通过增加参与度，专注度）并思考他们的工作（通过实现进步感）。这项工作将与整个消费者，工业和紧急应用的远程控制应用相关，因为远程控制机器人越来越多地出现在家庭和工作场所。我的工作将提高机器人技术的可访问性、长期使用性、安全性和性能。

Teleoperation interfaces enable people to remotely control robots to accomplish a variety of tasks such as filming, firefighting, industrial equipment inspection, and maintenance. This can enable increased accessibility (e.g., not requiring physical fitness for a job) and safety (e.g., social distancing). However, teleoperation remains difficult to do safely in the long-term, with up to 70% of incidents attributed to human error: difficulties in robot control and sensor displays will result in operators misunderstanding the robot's situation or how to control it, causing collisions, operator stress, or other incidents. Teleoperation interfaces need to be better designed to support operators - to reduce stress and improve focus to reduce errors. I propose to build interfaces to encourage increased teleoperator focus, engagement, and sense of progression, that is, a state of flow, colloquially referred to as being "in the zone." The benefits of flow would help improve operator performance and lower stress, but it is not immediately clear how to design interfaces that encourage flow in teleoperation. Flow theory research has found that matching a person's skill to an appropriate level of challenge can help encourage a state of flow. In virtual settings like video games, flow can be designed for by calibrating the difficulty of the virtual challenges, but in real world and uncontrolled dynamic situations, a state of flow can be difficult to create and maintain. New research is required to understand how existing fully-virtual video game techniques could be adapted to the real-world constraints of teleoperation, and how new technologies can be created to improve the safety and health of teleoperators. My short-term objective for my team is to design techniques that can leverage the benefits of flow in teleoperation - we will do this by investigating how to structure, present, and calibrate challenges for operators, how to acknowledge and reward overcoming those challenges, and how to measure flow dynamically. During this research my HQPs will develop skills in interface design, evaluation, robotics, work with cutting-edge platforms, and publish at leading international venues. The long-term objective of my research program is to build interfaces that support teleoperation performance and reduce stress by shaping operator experience. The proposed research will work towards this goal by developing interfaces that encourage operator flow to improve performance in critical tasks, and that change how operators experience long teleoperation sessions (by increasing engagement, focus) and think about their work (by enabling a feeling of progress). This work will be relevant to remote control applications throughout consumer, industry, and emergency applications as remote-controlled robots become increasingly available in homes and workplaces. My work will increase accessibility, long-term use, safety, and performance in robotic technology.