Usability Study of a Robot Companion for Monitoring Industrial Processes

In this paper we present the findings of a usability study for a monitoring robotic unit tele-operated via a virtual fixtures (VF) based control framework. The study aims at investigating the impact of VF on the robot navigation as well as the impact of multimodal feedback on the user performance in a static inspection task. The findings will help in the design of the monitoring control framework to inspect a robotised welding process, as it has been researched in previous work. The study has been conducted with untrained participants, involved in four different test scenarios. The experiments treated a static case in which users were asked to navigate the monitoring robot in the workspace to find a lit LED of a test-piece. The statistical analysis of the experiment metrics showed a positive impact of the VF control on the navigation of the monitoring robot even for users with no previous experience. Moreover, from the analysis of the task load index forms (TLX) it emerged that the combination of VF control and additional multimodal feedback improved the user performance without negatively impacting the effort required to accomplish the task.