Immersive control of a quadruped robot with Virtual Reality Eye-wear

This work describes an immersive control system for a quadruped robot, designed to track the head movements of the operator wearing a virtual reality eye-wear, while also utilizing joystick commands for locomotion control. The article details the implemented closed-loop velocity control approach and the locomotion task specifications. The proposed method has been implemented on a Spot robot from Boston Dynamics, with Meta Quest 2 virtual reality system. Evaluation of the approach involved a user study, where participants engaged in immersive control of the quadruped robot within an indoor experimental environment and provided feedback through standardized questionnaires. Pairwise comparison of the resulting data revealed significant advantages for the proposed immersive control system over a standard remote controller, with enhanced performance observed in the second trial of using the control system. However, participants lacking experience with virtual reality systems reported increased distress symptoms following the experiment.