Abstract
When we operate space robots, safety and reliability are the most important factors, even at the expense of dexterity and swiftness. Therefore it is very stressful for operators to teleoperate space robots. Especially since space robots-unlike ground robots-can not be repaired during the operation. Furthermore, operators have to quickly analyze a large amount of information about the targets, and immediately make decisions about how to proceed with the operation. The majority of information is presented by visual cues, such as digital values, status display, 3-D computer simulation, and camera images. Therefore, we developed an audio feedback system that can convey some of this information in order to improve the operator's decision making and avoid miss-recognition and miss-operation accidents. We used the Eye-Mark-Recorder (EMR) to assess the performance of this system. Until now audio systems for information presentation have only been proposed for ground-based operation systems. This is the first case where sound is utilized for space robotic operation even though sound does not actually exist in space.
