The impact of field of view on robotic telepresence navigation tasks

Telepresence interfaces for navigation tasks involving remote robots are generally designed for providing users with sensory and/or contextual feedback, mainly through onboard camera video stream or map-based localization. This choice is motivated by the fact that operating a mobile robot from distance may be mentally challenging for the users when they do not possess a proper awareness of the environment. However, fixed or narrow field of view cameras often available on these robots may lead to lack of awareness or worse navigation performance due to missing or limited peripheral vision. The aim of this paper is to investigate, through a comparative analysis, how an augmented field of view and/or a pan-tilt camera can impact on users’ performance in remote robot navigation tasks. Thus, a user study has been carried out to assess three different experimental configurations, i.e., a fixed camera with narrow (45°) field of view, a pan-tilt camera with a wide-angle (180°) horizontal field of view, and a fixed camera with a wide-angle (180°) diagonal field of view. Results showed a strong preference for the wide-angle field of view navigation modality, which provided users with greater situational awareness by requiring a lower cognitive effort.