Teleoperation of mobile manipulators within a home environment can significantly enhance the independence of individuals with severe motor impairments, allowing them to regain the ability to perform self-care and household tasks. There is a critical need for novel teleoperation interfaces to offer effective alternatives for individuals with impairments who may encounter challenges in using existing interfaces due to physical limitations. In this work, we iterate on one such interface, HAT (Head-Worn Assistive Teleoperation), an inertial-based wearable integrated into any head-worn garment. We evaluate HAT through a 7-day in-home study with Henry Evans, a non-speaking individual with quadriplegia who has participated extensively in assistive robotics studies. We additionally evaluate HAT with a proposed shared control method for mobile manipulators termed Driver Assistance and demonstrate how the interface generalizes to other physical devices and contexts. Our results show that HAT is a strong teleoperation interface across key metrics including efficiency, errors, learning curve, and workload. Code and videos are located on our project website.

翻译：在家庭环境中对移动机械臂进行遥操作，可显著提升严重运动障碍患者的独立性，使其重获自理与家务能力。当前亟需新型遥操作界面，为因身体限制难以使用现有界面的功能障碍患者提供有效替代方案。本文迭代优化了一种名为HAT（头戴式辅助遥操作）的界面——一种可集成于任意头戴式衣物的惯性传感可穿戴设备。我们通过与重度四肢瘫痪的非语言患者亨利·埃文斯（Henry Evans）开展为期7天的家庭研究评估HAT，该患者曾广泛参与辅助机器人研究。同时，我们采用名为“驾驶员辅助系统”的移动机械臂共享控制方法对HAT进行评估，并展示该界面如何泛化至其他物理设备与场景。实验结果表明，HAT在效率、错误率、学习曲线及工作负荷等关键指标上均表现出优异的遥操作性能。代码与演示视频见项目网站。