Workload Management in Teleoperation of Unmanned Ground Vehicles: Effects of a Delay Compensation Aid on Human Operators’ Workload and Teleoperation Performance
Abstract
Workload management is of critical concern in the teleoperation of unmanned vehicles because teleoperation is often employed in high-risk industries wherein high workload can lead to sub-optimal task performance and can harm human operators’ long-term well-being. This study aimed to assess the detrimental effects of time delays in teleoperation on operators’ workload and performance, and how a delay compensation aid mitigated such effects. We conducted a human-in-the-loop experiment with 36 participants using a dual-task teleoperation platform, where participants drove a simulated High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) and performed a one-back memory task under three conditions: the delay condition, the delay with compensation aid condition, and the ideal no delay condition. A model-free predictor was used as the compensation aid. Results indicate that with a time delay of 0.8-s participants’ workload increased and performance degraded significantly. Moreover, the model-free predictor mitigated the detrimental effects of time delay on workload and task performance. Our findings suggest that participants are more sensitive in their perceived workload compared to the objective and physiological measures of workload. In addition, without any delay compensation algorithms, continuous teleoperation may not be ideal for operations with long time delays.
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Electromyography (EMG) can assess co-occurring physical demand to decompose cognitive load factors, such as the impact of motor memory.
“In addition, specialized measurements techniques, such as Electromyography (EMG), which records the electrical activity of muscles [110,111,171], can assess co-occurring physical demand to decompose cognitive load factors, such as the impact of motor memory [139].”
From A Survey on Measuring Cognitive Workload in Human-Computer Interaction (2023) · cites this paper as [139]
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A Survey on Measuring Cognitive Workload in Human-Computer Interaction
Kosch, T., Karolus, J., Zagermann, J., Reiterer, H., Schmidt, A., & Woźniak, P. W. (2023) · ACM Computing Surveys · doi:10.1145/3582272 · Cited by 304 · see citing works
“Pupil Diameter [4, 5, 9–11, 18–22, 27, 28, 39, 44–47, 55, 58, 62, 63, 72, 87, 92, 94, 99, 103, 107, 108, 112, 142, 143, 153, 154, 157, 165, 175, 187–189, 195, 199–201, 207, 215, 227, 236, 239, 248, 249, 255, 257, 266] Saccades [10, 21, 27, 44–47, 76, 87, 99, 165, 184, 193, 228, 236, 258] Eye Blinks…”
- Authors
- Lu, S., Zhang, M. Y., Ersal, T., & Yang, X. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Corresponding author
- Yang, X. Jessie
- Venue
- International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-02-12
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 19
- Pages
- 1820-1830
- ISSN
- 1044-7318 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7590
- OpenAlex
- W2913149626
- Cited by
- 50
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 5
- FWCI
- 1.83
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Teleoperation and Haptic Systems
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Human-Automation Interaction and Safety
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Keywords
- teleoperation, unmanned ground vehicles, operator workload, time delay compensation, dual-task performance, HMMWV, perceived workload, physiological workload measures
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