Virtual Teleoperation Setup for a Bimanual Bartending Robot

This paper presents the preliminary design of a teleoperation system for a bimanual bartending robot, with reference to the BRILLO (Bartending Robot for Interactive Long Lasting Operations) project. The aim is to simulate the remote control of the robotic bartender by the human operator in an intuitive manner, using Virtual Reality technologies. The proposed Virtual Reality architecture is based on the use of commercial Head Mounted Display with a pair of hand controllers and the virtual simulation of the remote environment of the robot, with the robotic simulator CoppeliaSim. Originally, virtual simulations of the robot environment have allowed to identify the possible scenarios and interactions between the customers and the different robotic systems inside the automatized bar: the totem for the selection and payment of the order, the robotic bartender to prepare the cocktail and the mobile robot for the cocktail serving at the table. Secondly, focusing on a sequence of main tasks that the robotic bartender must perform for the cocktails preparation, the operator’s control on the simulated robotic system has been reproduced. In fact, the aim of this first experimental phase is to test the interaction between the human operator and the simulated immersive environment for the remote control of the robotic system. Two use cases have been reproduced: the first is related to the recovery from a failure situation such as the fall of a glass, while the second refers to the trajectory training to perform some repeating actions. Six operators (three males and three females), who already knew the taks, with an age between 25 and 40 years and a minimum experience with VR technology for personal entertainment, have been involved in the test phase. For this reason, the paper will finally discuss the perception of the involved operators about the use of the proposed VR architecture in terms of usability and mental workload.