Influence of spatial orientation and spatial visualization abilities on space teleoperation performance

Astronauts perform space teleoperation tasks with visual feedback from outside cameras. Individuals differ greatly in the ability to integrate camera views, understand the workspace, and ensure clearances between the robot arm and obstacles. We believe that these individual differences correlate with two known subcomponents of spatial intelligence: perspective-taking (PT) and spatial visualization (SV). A preliminary study [1] supports this hypothesis. We believe astronauts use PT (the ability to imagine an object from a different viewpoint) to integrate camera information into an environmentally-referenced frame defined by the arm control axes. In some cases, it may be easier to visualize the manipulation of the payload with respect to the robot arm itself, than to the environment. In that case, SV(i.e., the ability to mentally manipulate an object from an egocentric perspective) may be exploited. We measured the performance of 25 naive subjects who used hand-controllers to rotate and translate, and 3 environmentally-fixed camera views. These devices controlled a 2-boom, 6 degree-of-freedom virtually-simulated arm to perform pickup and docking subtasks.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Menchaca Brandan, María Alejandra

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Charles M. Oman.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40391

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40391