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This article presents the design aspects and development processes to transform a general-purpose mobile robotic platform into a semi-autonomous agricultural robot sprayer focusing on user interfaces for teleoperation. The hardware and the software modules that must be installed onto the system are described, with particular emphasis on human–robot interaction. Details of the technology are given focusing on the user interface aspects. Two laboratory experiments and two studies in the field to evaluate the usability of the user interface provide evidence for the increased usability of a prototype robotic system. Specifically, the study aimed to empirically evaluate the type of target selection input device mouse and digital pen outperformed Wiimote in terms of usability. A field experiment evaluated the effect of three design factors: (a) type of screen output, (b) number of views, (c) type of robot control input device. Results showed that participants were significantly more effective but less efficient when they had multiple views, than when they had a single view. PC keyboard was also found to significantly outperform PS3 gamepad in terms of interaction efficiency and perceived usability. Heuristic evaluations of different user interfaces were also performed using research-based HRI heuristics. Finally, a study on participants’ overall user experience found that the system was evaluated positively on the User Experience Questionnaire scales.

This paper presents a taxonomy of design guidelines for robot teleoperation developed from a focused literature review of robot teleoperation. A list of user interface design guidelines was assembled, open card sorting and a focus group were used to classify them, and closed card sorting was employed to validate and further refine the proposed taxonomy. The initially obtained set of 70 guidelines is grouped into eight categories: platform architecture and scalability, error prevention and recovery, visual design, information presentation, robot state awareness, interaction effectiveness and efficiency, robot environment/surroundings awareness, and cognitive factors. Agricultural robots were used as an application case study for implementation and field evaluation. The proposed guideline taxonomy was used heuristically to evaluate the usability of an existing user interface of a teleoperated agricultural robot.

Teleoperation of an agricultural robotic system requires effective and efficient human-robot interaction. This paper investigates the usability of different interaction modes for agricultural robot teleoperation. Specifically, we examined the overall influence of two types of output devices (PC screen, head mounted display), two types of peripheral vision support mechanisms (single view, multiple views), and two types of control input devices (PC keyboard, PS3 gamepad) on observed and perceived usability of a teleoperated agricultural sprayer. A modular user interface for teleoperating an agricultural robot sprayer was constructed and field-tested. Evaluation included eight interaction modes: the different combinations of the 3 factors. Thirty representative participants used each interaction mode to navigate the robot along a vineyard and spray grape clusters based on a 2 x 2 x 2 repeated measures experimental design. Objective metrics of the effectiveness and efficiency of the human-robot collaboration were collected. Participants also completed questionnaires related to their user experience with the system in each interaction mode. Results show that the most important factor for human-robot interface usability is the number and placement of views. The type of robot control input device was also a significant factor in certain dependents, whereas the effect of the screen output type was only significant on the participants' perceived workload index. Specific recommendations for mobile field robot teleoperation to improve HRI awareness for the agricultural spraying task are presented. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Volume 9229, 2014, Article number 92291W Agricultural robots can tackle harsh working conditions and hardness of work, as well as the shortage of laborers that is a bottleneck to agricultural production. Such robots exist, but they are not yet widespread. We believe that the limited usage of robotics in agriculture could be related to the fact that the mainstream direction for robotics in agriculture is full automation. The teleoperation of an agricultural robotic system can enable improved performance overcoming the complexity that current autonomous robots face due to the dynamic and unstructured agricultural environment. A field study was conducted to evaluate eight different user interfaces aiming to determine the factors that should be taken into consideration by designers while developing user interfaces for robot teleoperation in agriculture. Thirty participants, including farmers and agricultural engineers, were asked to use different teleoperation interaction modes in order to navigate the robot along vineyard rows and spray grape clusters. Based on our findings, additional views for target identification and peripheral vision improved both robot navigation (fewer collisions) and target identification (sprayed grape clusters). In this paper, we discuss aspects of user interface design related to remote operation of an agricultural robot. © 2014 SPIE.