A pre-offering view system for teleoperators of heavy machines to acquire cognitive maps

In teleoperation of heavy machines, work efficiency will be 50% lower than manned operation because operators cannot obtain effective information about work sites due to the limitation of current monitoring systems. Operators would have opportunities to obtain such information before work (about a week required to introduce teleoperation systems) and during work. As a fundamental study to support operator's spatial cognition, we developed views to provide spatial information of work sites before work. Humans have cognitive maps which are created based on knowledge acquired from survey and route perspectives. To make operators acquire the above two knowledge, we provide a bird's-eye view that can be changed by operators to acquire a knowledge from survey perspective, and a view from operator's viewpoint that can be changed by operator's intention to acquire a knowledge from route perspective. To evaluate two pre-offering views, we preformed experiments using a virtual reality simulator. The results indicated that a view to acquire a knowledge from survey perspective could help operators plan totally and one to acquire a knowledge from route perspective could help operators plan locally, and could increase work efficiency.