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：在家庭环境中遥操作移动操作器可显著提升重度运动功能障碍患者的独立性，使其重获自理与家务操作能力。针对因身体限制而难以使用现有接口的残障人士，亟需开发新型遥操作接口以提供有效替代方案。本研究迭代开发了HAT（头戴式辅助遥操作）——一种可集成至任意头戴式服饰的惯性传感可穿戴设备。我们通过与四肢瘫痪且无言语能力的亨利·埃文斯（Henry Evans）开展为期7天的入户研究来评估HAT，该受试者曾广泛参与辅助机器人研究。同时，我们还对HAT配合所提出的移动操作器共享控制方法（称为Driver Assistance）进行了评估，并验证该接口对其他物理设备及场景的泛化能力。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接口性能。代码与视频资料见项目网站。