Adaptive Virtual Immersion and Co-Adaptation for Robot-Assisted Remote Control—a subproject within the Cluster of Excellence “The Martian Mindset.”

As part of the Cluster of Excellence “The Martian Mindset: A Scarcity-Driven Engineering Paradigm,” the Medical Technology Systems (SMT) research group is working on adaptive virtual immersion for the remote control of robots in a Mars production facility. The goal is to enable people who cannot control such a facility on-site to immerse themselves in the scene via a digital twin and an adaptive virtual reality environment in a way that facilitates intuitive collaboration with robots, including through an exoskeleton for teleoperation with force and tactile feedback.

Since production processes and robot configurations are constantly changing under the uncertain conditions of a Martian environment, we are developing methods that allow the VR representation, digital twin, and exoskeleton interface to continuously adapt to new circumstances as well as to the operator’s state. The focus here is on analyzing the electroencephalogram (EEG), which is used as implicit feedback to continuously improve robot behavior and the virtual environment through machine learning.