Virtual Reality Interface Evaluation for Earthwork Teleoperation

Automation and robotics are destined to play a critical role in the Industry 4.0 revolution, as illustrated by the emergence of autonomous machinery in earthwork operations. Despite rapid progress, autonomous agents will always require human supervision to instruct their mission and to guaranty safety when unexpected problems arise. Traditional human supervision requires an operator to physically enter each machine at risk and manually take control. This approach is time-consuming and requires highly qualified personnel capable of operating various machines. This process can be hastened and simplified by means of teleoperated supervision, which itself requires the appropriate interface. In this paper we evaluate a virtual reality (VR)-based interface using hybrid interactions and an immersive digital-twin compared to a real-life control. We compare these interfaces through control tasks performed by expert and non-expert operators, analyzing time and precision, as well as user feedback. The preliminary results show that the VR interface brings equivalent and satisfactory performances for experts and improves the efficiency of apprentices. Therefore, not only does everyone performs well in the virtual environment, but also the training time can be shortened significantly as non-experts can perform similarly under the same conditions.