Performance evaluation of monocular predictive display

In teleoperation systems, operator performance is negatively affected by time-delayed visual feedback. Predictive display (PD) compensates for delays by providing synthesized visual feedback. While most existing PD methods rely on a priori models (e.g., from laser range finding or stereo vision), recent work on monocular SLAM and SFM makes it possible to acquire PD models in single camera applications. In this work, we evaluate operator performance of PD visual feedback based on a coarse 3D model. We report the experimental results of 12 human tele-operators each performing 96 visual alignment tasks with a 300ms delay. Four operating modes are considered: delayed video (no PD), video-based PD using a stabilizing plane (homography), 3D model-based PD, and no delay (ground truth). The results indicate that vision-based PD (both plane and 3D model-based) is significantly better than delayed video. It reduced task completion time 40% and is nearly as good as the no delay condition. PD based on a sparse a 3D model was somewhat better than the simpler plane based method.