Telerobotic Mini-Golf: Interactive Learning Performance of Human Teleoperators

A telerobotic test-bed has recently been built between KAIST(Korea) and Saga University(Japan). This paper presents its first research work on investigating the interactive learning performance of human teleoperators. For this purpose, the telerobotic test-bed was re-shaped to a telerobotic golf system. Eleven players were participated, and their interactive performance with the telerobot was carefully analyzed for the errors and skills that they demonstrated. It was observed that human teleoperators first try to avoid errors that they did in the previous trials, and then make efforts to explore new skills. It was also experienced that simple task oriented design features and their coordination could significantly improve telerobotic system performance without making it to an excessively sophisticated shape. Interactive learning with naked-eye vision was compared with that of camera vision, and an effective training procedure for human teleoperators was revealed. Some simple, yet appropriate techniques have also been identified that significantly enhance the performance of human teleoperators.