This R&D project, funded by the Robotics Technology Consortium, looked at ways to improve depth perception to aid EOD robot teleoperation, by providing remote head-aimed, stereoscopic vision along with high-definition video to the robot operators.

Because stereo vision systems have been reported to cause symptoms similar to motion sickness, we also included the use of microstereopsis, a “kinder, gentler” form of stereo video that uses reduced camera separation to minimize operator discomfort, while still providing a useful amount of stereo parallax.

The technology developed on this project included:

• Head-aimed stereo gimbal, based on our HARV gimbal product
• Wide-angle HD video (up to 1080i, 114° horizontal field of view)
• Comfortable stereo video, with camera separation determined via microstereopsis research
• H.264 encoding with <50 ms latency

During the project, this technology was tested both in-house and in a formal experiment, and is now available as the HARV-3D product.

Project details:

Title: Improved Depth Perception to Aid Tele-Operation
Contract: W15QKN-09-RPP-0001, Agreement # 69-200902, Task Assignment # T01
Period of Performance: 5/21/09 through 5/21/11
Principal Investigator: Dale R. Tyczka (dtyczka@chattenassociates.com)

Publications:

Tyczka, D. R., Chatten, M. J., Chatten, J. B., “Comparison of Monoscopic and Stereoscopic Head-Aimed Vision Systems in Perceived Depth, Manipulation and Teleoperation Tasks,” AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America, Denver, CO, USA, 24 – 27 August 2010