Applied Adaptive Virtual Reality: Systems for Robotic Teleoperation in Space and other Dangerous Domains

Robots are being utilized in many different ways in today’s society. Teleoperated robots are robots that can be controlled from a distance. This is commonly done with remote controllers while observing the robot through a screen, but using virtual reality (VR) is also a possibility. VR teleoperation has many benefits, but if a robot is operating in a dangerous environment, as is one of the main applications for these types of robots, the feeling of immersion caused by VR may be problematic. If the operator feels they themselves are in danger, that may negatively impact their performance. The following paper introduces Applied Adaptive VR (AAVR) as a potential solution to this problem. AAVR is a combination of current VR technologies, such as fear modeling, that could be applied to real world teleoperation tasks. The purpose of AAVR is to have VR environments adapt during teleoperation to be less fear inducing, which is expected to improve performance. Relevant topics of interest, and methods and recommendations for developing such a system are discussed.