Design and Evaluation of a Touchscreen-Based Teleoperation Interface for Robotic Manipulators

Engineering notes

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为 VLA、具身智能、人形机器人控制、机器人操作等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Intuitive teleoperation interfaces are crucial for the safe and effective operation of robotic manipulators in challenging environments. In the nuclear industry, surface contact tasks such as swab sampling require precise path and force tracking, obstacle avoidance, and sustained operator attention, which conventional joystick interfaces struggle to support effectively. This study designs and evaluates a novel touchscreen teleoperation interface that maps continuous finger movements directly to robotic manipulator motions, provides finer velocity control, and integrates control with visualization, enabling more natural, precise, and intuitive surface interaction than conventional controllers. A comparative user study with 20 participants evaluated task performance and workload using the proposed touchscreen, a conventional joystick, and a single-click autonomous mode. Tasks simulated realistic surface manipulation using a Franka Emika Panda arm, remotely controlled from another country. Kinematic, physiological, and behavioral data were recorded to comprehensively assess task performance, cognitive load, and operator trust across each control condition. Participants completed teleoperation tasks more efficiently and accurately with the touchscreen interface, achieving a 53.5% reduction in completion time (median: 2.50 vs. 5.38 min), higher in-area coverage on the sinusoidal path (90.7% vs. 84.1%), and lower overshoot on both path geometries compared with the joystick. Cognitive load, quantified via NASA-TLX (0-100), decreased from joystick to touchscreen (mean TLX 52 to 43; -9 points, -17.3%) and was lowest under the autonomous one-click mode (31; -21 points vs. joystick, -40.4%; -12 vs. touchscreen, -27.9%). This research presents an easy-to-implement touchscreen interface that improves performance in teleoperated surface tasks while reducing cognitive load.

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

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