Enabling Humans to Plan Inspection Paths Using a Virtual Reality Interface

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that non-expert users can effectively generate high-quality robot inspection paths using a virtual reality interface, reducing reliance on automated algorithms and specialized knowledge.

Contribution

It introduces a VR-based interface enabling non-experts to plan inspection paths, showing comparable quality to automated algorithms in a user study.

Findings

Non-experts can generate inspection paths with 66-81% of automated algorithm quality.

Significant variation exists in user performance, linked to typical user behaviors.

The VR interface effectively supports inspection path planning by non-experts.

Abstract

In this work, we investigate whether humans can manually generate high-quality robot paths for optical inspections. Typically, automated algorithms are used to solve the inspection planning problem. The use of automated algorithms implies that specialized knowledge from users is needed to set up the algorithm. We aim to replace this need for specialized experience, by entrusting a non-expert human user with the planning task. We augment this user with intuitive visualizations and interactions in virtual reality. To investigate if humans can generate high-quality inspection paths, we perform a user study in which users from different experience categories, generate inspection paths with the proposed virtual reality interface. From our study, it can be concluded that users without experience can generate high-quality inspection paths: The median inspection quality of user generated paths ranged between 66-81\% of the quality of a state-of-the-art automated algorithm on various inspection planning scenarios. We noticed however, a sizable variation in the performance of users, which is a result of some typical user behaviors. These behaviors are discussed, and possible solutions are provided.