Bimanual haptic teleoperation for discovering and uncovering buried objects

We describe an experimental system for the evaluation of teleoperation performance. The system was used in two experiments where operators were assigned the task of discovering a buried object while minimizing contact forces. The studies i) demonstrated the advantage of haptic feedback in the discovery task, and ii) compared different methods for haptic feedback, including our new bimanual method, Touch and Guide in Tandem (TAGIT). Results show that TAGIT enables the effective workspace of the teleoperator to be expanded while minimizing forces from exploration and contact, reducing their variability, and reducing task completion times.