Transition of Peri-personal Space by Making Robot Hands Transparent and Displaying Virtual Hands to Improve the Accuracy of Position Grasping

In recent years, teleoperated robots have been developed to provide work and experience without physically human mobility. When working or experiencing through teleoperation, reaching and grasping an object is a frequent task. However, it is difficult to reach and grasp an object accurately. The main reason is that depth perception is reduced, and it is difficult for the operators to grasp the robot’s surroundings in the same way that they grasp their own surroundings on a daily basis. Therefore, an interface is proposed in which the teleoperated robot hands are made transparent from the images sent from the teleoperated follower side, and virtual hands are displayed at the position and posture where the robot hands existed. The virtual hands display enhances the embodiment of the robot hands and transfers the peri-personal space (PPS) around the person to the robot hands, which enables accurate recognition of the location of objects. Experiments of reaching and grasping showed that displaying the virtual hands reduced the time to complete the task by 19.9 percent and significantly improved the success rate of grasping, compared to viewing the robot hands. In addition, it was confirmed that the virtual hands were more embodied when the virtual hands were displayed. Thus, this interface was confirmed to transfer the PPS around the robot hands and improve the accuracy of position grasping.