The effect of automated compensation for incongruent axes on teleoperator performance

Teleoperation is frequently performed with misalignments between operator o r camera viewing direction and controller orientation. Examples of this occ ur in endoscopic surgery and in teleoperation with multiple camera views. T he objective of this study was to find a method to automatically compensate for those misalignments so that human operators performing tasks under suc h scenarios could achieve levels of performance comparable to aligned condi tions without additional training requirements. In this paper we report on a set of experiments conducted to test a method developed for that purpose. Participants were asked to track a randomly moving target on a computer di splay using a cursor controlled with a joystick. Performance was recorded u nder various visual-motor misalignments with and without automated compensa tion. Results indicated significant improvements in operator performance th rough use of automatic compensation only under certain types of misalignmen t. Actual or potential applications of this research include teleoperation and endoscopic surgery.