Controlling telerobotic operations adaptive to quality of teleoperator and task dexterity

Telerobotic systems have been researched for decades due to their extensive applications in many civilian and military areas. Most research mainly focused on either the stability or telepresence of the telerobotic systems. Few studies have investigated the effects of the confidence of the teleoperator on the performance of the teleoperation. The confidence of the teleoperator is of significant importance to the efficiency and safety of the telerobotic systems. This paper proposes a concept named quality of teleoperator (QoT) to represent the confidence of the decisions and commands generated by the teleoperator. The value of QoT is computed based on a set of mental states of the teleoperator. Based on the QoT, a control adjustment mechanism is designed to enhance the efficiency and safety of the telerobotic systems. Experiments were implemented on a manipulator to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.