Human-Robot Interfaces to Enable Effective and Effortless Control for Remote Manipulation of Tele-nursing Robot

Lin, Tsung-Chi

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Human-Robot Interfaces to Enable Effective and Effortless Control for Remote Manipulation of Tele-nursing Robot

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Tele-nursing robots offer a safe approach to patient care in quarantine areas during pandemics, reducing infection risks for healthcare workers and patients. They may also address nursing shortages and improve healthcare viability by providing remote care in various settings. However, remote manipulation is a challenging task due to limited feedback, latency, lack of sensory feedback, limited dexterity, and environmental factors. These factors make it difficult to control objects remotely with accuracy and precision, requiring advanced technology and skilled operators to achieve successful outcomes. In this dissertation, we investigate human-robot interfaces for remote manipulation of tele-nursing robots, which aims to enable effective and effortless control. This dissertation addresses challenges related to remote manipulation for tele-nursing robots, focusing on developing workload-adaptive teleoperation interfaces for efficient and intuitive control, designing human-preferred remote manipulation assistance based on natural human perception-action coordination for improved user adaptivity, and additionally investigating the impact of teleoperation assistance reliability on workload and user preference. We advance the design of human-robot collaboration for remote manipulation, enabling humans and robots to contribute their strengths. We further develop objective engagement and workload estimation methods using human motion and gaze tracking. The developed human-robot interfaces are effective across various remote manipulation systems. The dissertation concludes by summarizing key takeaways and identifying potential directions for future research.

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