Building sustainable habitats on the moon has been planned for decades. However, applying fully automated construction systems is still challenging in altered environments. Teleoperation, which is the remote control of the machine, can serve as an intermediate phase before achieving fully autonomous systems. Since the teleoperation between operators on the earth-ground and robots on the lunar surface introduces inevitable communication time delays under a deep space network system, it is important to understand its impact on task performance and operator behaviors in teleoperated construction tasks. This paper develops a simulated lunar environment for excavator teleoperation systems in virtual reality to examine task performance and operator behaviors in time delay conditions. The outcomes indicate that time delays significantly degrade task performance, and the operators modify their control strategies to cope with the time delay conditions. The findings will contribute to understanding human behaviors in time-delayed teleoperation of lunar construction tasks.

中文翻译：

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虚拟月球构建仿真中延时挖掘机远程操作的探索性研究：任务绩效与操作者行为


在月球上建造可持续的栖息地已经计划了几十年。然而，在改变的环境中应用全自动建筑系统仍然具有挑战性。远程操作，即机器的远程控制，可以作为实现完全自主系统之前的中间阶段。由于在深空网络系统下，地地操作员与月球表面机器人之间的远程操作不可避免地引入了通信时间延迟，因此了解其对远程操作建造任务中任务性能和操作员行为的影响非常重要。本文在虚拟现实中为挖掘机远程操作系统开发了一个模拟的月球环境，以检查时间延迟条件下的任务性能和操作员行为。结果表明，时间延迟会显著降低任务性能，并且操作员会修改其控制策略以应对时间延迟情况。这些发现将有助于理解人类在月球建造任务的延时远程操作中的行为。