Haptic Feedback of Tool Vibrations Facilitates Telerobotic Construction

Telerobotics has shown promise in helping workers safely manipulate building components on construction sites; however, its primary reliance on visual feedback limits efficiency in situations with stiff contact or poor visibility. Reliable and economical haptic feedback could fill this perception gap and facilitate construction activities. Thus, we designed an audio-based haptic feedback system that measures the vibrations experienced by the robot tools and enables the operator to feel them in real time. Accurate haptic transmission was achieved by optimizing the positions of the system's off-the-shelf accelerometers and voice-coil actuators. A user study was conducted to evaluate how this naturalistic type of vibration feedback affects the operator's performance in telerobotic assembly. Thirty participants used a bimanual teleoperation system to build a structure under three randomly ordered haptic feedback conditions: no vibrations, one-axis vibrations, and three-axis vibrations. The results show that users took advantage of both kinds of haptic feedback after gaining some experience with the task, causing significantly lower vibrations and forces in the second trial. Subjective responses indicate that haptic feedback reduced the perceived task difficulty, task duration, and fatigue. These results demonstrate that providing this type of vibrotactile feedback on teleoperated construction robots would enhance user performance and experience.