Contact: Bob Ratliff
Whether Harrison Ford outraces a giant boulder or Arnold Schwarzenegger battles a seemingly unstoppable cyborg, great action movies make viewers feel part of the, well, action.
With a $465,000 National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award, a Mississippi State University researcher is seeking to create a similar sense of "being there" in the American workplace. A four-year project led by industrial engineer David B. Kaber is focusing on telepresence-technology that creates the sensation of being present at a remote location.
"Telepresence combines psychology and engineering to improve the performance of robots controlled by a human at a distance," he said. "It is related to watching a movie in a theater and feeling part of on-screen action."
Now in its second year, Kaber's research is being conducted in conjunction with industrial psychologist John Draper at Oak Ridge (Tenn.) National Laboratory and a team of MSU students. Their collective goal is to improve the flow of information between the human operators and the remote machines they control.
If the coordinated projects are successful, a teleoperator working with a remote controlled robot will seem to be present where the robot is working. The research has applications for medicine, space exploration and industry.
A student team led by doctoral candidate Jennifer D. Riley of Tylertown has researched the effect of display types on navigating a vehicle through a virtual environment.
Riley, along with fellow doctoral students Dezhen Song and Rong Zhou, has found that the use of a conventional monitor, helmet-mounted or large-screen projection causes little difference in navigation time. For 24 volunteer testers, however, the higher-resolution conventional monitor did provide a greater telepresence.
Zhou leads a team developing a computer interface to link robots and their human operators. The interface allows the human operator to perform a virtual task off-line to test the safety and efficiency of the task. The team also has added a picture-in-picture display to give the operator better control and awareness of the task and the total environment.
Song leads a team developing computer software for use in working with remote-controlled robots. Like Zhou, he is a native of the People's Republic of China.
Other research team members include Kheng-wooi Tan, a master's degree candidate from Malaysia, and seniors Dannon C. Butts of Kilmichael and Janna D. Smith of Ellisville.
Though just a year of research is complete, the teams already have broken new ground, Kaber said.
"There have been few, if any, studies similar to what Jennifer and her team have done with visual display types and telepresence," he added.
Another area MSU scientists soon will explore: How time lags associated with remote robot control using a virtual environment and traditional video interface reduce the sensation of being at the task site.