Exploiting eye-hand coordination: A novel approach to remote manipulation

Eye movements play an essential role in planning and executing manual actions. Eye-hand coordination is a natural human skill. We exploit this skill for an intuitive remote manipulation system that allows even non-expert users to operate a robot safely without prior experience. Specifically, we propose a visio-haptic approach to controlling a 7-DOF robotic arm. Our system is fully mobile, allowing for unconstraint operation in any environment. An eyetracker captures the operator´s gaze. The end effector or particular joints are selected by simply fixating the to-be-controlled segment. A sensor-equipped tangible object provides a haptic interface between the operator´s hand and the focused part of the robotic arm. The system features two operation modes, direct joint rotation and 3d end effector control in a global cartesian frame. We evaluated the system in a proof-of-concept study with untrained users. The participants safely operated the robot and accomplished an obstacle avoidance task. For this purpose, they used both operation modes.