LAUSR

Abstract Construction equipment teleoperation is a promising solution when the site environment is hazardous to operators. However, limited situational awareness of the operator, especially under adverse visual conditions, impedes the implementation of construction equipment teleoperation. Virtual annotations (VAs) have great potential to improve an operator's situational awareness. The work presented in this paper investigates the effects of VA by comparing the teleoperation performances of an excavator between an experimental group (with VA) and a control group (without VA) in a virtual environment. Subjects in the experimental group made significantly fewer collisions under the adverse visual condition than the subjects in the control group with similar 3D gaming experience. It indicates that properly-designed VAs can help operators efficiently integrate and understand information from different visual sources. Some negative effects were also observed, such as increased time of completion and a trend of increased collision numbers on the back of the equipment. Speculation is that an operator will form a visual base and selectively integrate information from other visual sources when the cognitive load exceeds a limit. The results suggested a need to investigate further the mechanism of forming a visual base and the assessment of an operator's cognitive load.