Investigating Spatial Guidance for a Cooperative Handheld Robot

How to provide feedback information to guide users of a handheld robotic device when performing a spatial exploration task? We are investigating this issue via various feedback methods for communicating a 5 degree of freedom target to a user. We compare against a non-robotic handheld wand and use various display alternatives including a stereoscopic VR display (Oculus Rift), a monocular see-through AR display and a 2D screen, as well as simple robot arm gesturing. Our results indicate a significant improvement when using the handheld robot and some interesting conclusions on the effect of various popular display technologies. More to come on a follow up publication... Watch this space and also handheldrobotics.org