Electrifying Obstacle Avoidance: Enhancing Teleoperation of Robots with EMS-Assisted Obstacle Avoidance

We investigate how the use of haptic feedback through electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) can improve collision-avoidance in a robot teleoperation scenario. Background: Collision-free requires extensive situation awareness by operator. This is difficult to achieve purely visually when obstacles exist outside robot’s field view. Therefore, from other sensory channels be beneficial. Method: compare modalities form auditory, and bi-modal feedback, notifying users about incoming their view, moving arms direction avoid obstacle. evaluate different alongside unimodal visual baseline user study (N=9), where participants are controlling robotic arm virtual reality environment. measure objective performance metrics terms number collisions errors, as well subjective using NASA-TLX short version User Experience Questionnaire. Findings: Unimodal EMS outperformed auditory it comes hedonic experience (p<.001). with regards pragmatic (p=.018). did not detect significant differences (collisions errors). measured strong learning effect investigating collision count time. Key insights: The promising for this task. Two nine reported some level discomfort. modality best utilized nudging rather than extended movement.