AOA: Ambient obstacle avoidance interface

In this paper, we present a novel interface for teleoperating ground vehicles. Obstacle avoidance with ground vehicles demands a high level of operator attention, typically distracting from the primary mission. The Ambient Obstacle Avoidance (AOA) was designed to allow operators to effectively perform a primary task, such as search, while still effectively avoiding obstacles. The AOA wraps around a standard video interface and provides range information without requiring a separate screen. AOA combines and reduces different data streams into proportionately scaled symbology that directly shows important relationships between vehicle width, vehicle orientation and obstacles in the environment. The use of the AOA interface was tested in both simulation and on physical robots. Results from both tests show an improvement in obstacle avoidance during navigation with the AOA. In addition, results from the simulation test indicate that operators using AOA were able to leverage ambient vision such that the primary visual task was not impeded.