Teleoperation requires a complex combination of the operator's cognitive, perceptual, and motor skills. Our experiment tested the ability of subjects to teleoperate a remote robot under different conditions of increasing sensory feedback. We also evaluated each operator's spatial perception skills using a battery of tests to understand the effect of spatial perception on the operator's ability to perform the teleoperation task. The experiment showed that the spatial ability of an operator—as reflected by a test battery of two spatial recognition and two spatial manipulation tests—was significantly correlated with the ability to teleoperate the robot through a maze. Surprisingly, providing different combinations of visual, auditory, and vibrotactile feedback to the operator did not significantly change performance. However, there was an interaction between spatial ability and feedback condition that affected teleoperation performance.

Unilateral visual neglect (UVN) is the inability of patients, with damage to their left or right cerebral hemisphere, to respond to stimuli presented on the side opposite the lesion. We present a preliminary study on using a HMD-based-eye-tracking system for the assessment of UVN. Normal subjects and patients with UVN were shown two virtual environment (VE) scenes. The subjects were required to identify and count the objects in scene 1, and to identify a clock and tell the time in scene 2. Eye movements of these subjects were recorded during the task. There were differences in the amount of visual field scanned by the subjects and patients. The normal subjects scanned the entire scene and identified all the objects. Patients with left UVN did not scan the left side of the scene and did not report objects on that side. Patients with right UVN scanned only the left side of the scene and did not report objects on the right side of the scene. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using the HMD-based eye-tracking system in a virtual environment for characterizing UVN.