Improving the visual momentum of tethered viewpoint displays using spatial cue augmentation

A tethered viewpoint in an operator interface visualizes remote situations according to a robot’s heading direction. The tethered view, adhering to the line-of-sight requirement, results lower visual momentum when visualizing dense environments, such as during indoor teleoperation tasks. This problem occurs because the tethered view only partially visualizes spatial information, unlike the bird’s-eye view. Operators are thus inhibited to build their spatial mental model because the transitions happen as the robot moves. This paper presents an approach to improve the visual momentum of the tethered view by complementing the omitted spatial information. The approach augments simplified spatial cues on the excluded areas of a tethered view. The cues are purportedly used to illuminate the basic spatial structure of the surroundings and can thus help operators in constructing their spatial mental models. Evaluation of the presented approach was conducted using a simulated telerobot environment. The results indicated that the augmented view possessed a higher visual momentum, which exhibited by the lowered workload and enhanced levels of both spatial perception and situational awareness.