MRReP: Mixed Reality-based Hand-drawn Reference Path Editing Interface for Mobile Robot Navigation

TL;DR

MRReP introduces a mixed reality interface allowing users to draw paths directly on the physical environment, improving accuracy and usability in robot navigation tasks.

Contribution

It presents a novel MR-based path editing interface and a custom planner that effectively incorporates human spatial intentions into robot navigation.

Findings

MRReP improved path specification accuracy over baseline.

Users reported higher usability and lower workload with MRReP.

MRReP enabled more stable path specification in physical environments.

Abstract

Autonomous mobile robots operating in human-shared indoor environments often require paths that reflect human spatial intentions, such as avoiding interference with pedestrian flow or maintaining comfortable clearance. However, conventional path planners primarily optimize geometric costs and provide limited support for explicit route specification by human operators. This paper presents MRReP, a Mixed Reality-based interface that enables users to draw a Hand-drawn Reference Path (HRP) directly on the physical floor using hand gestures. The drawn HRP is integrated into the robot navigation stack through a custom Hand-drawn Reference Path Planner, which converts the user-specified point sequence into a global path for autonomous navigation. We evaluated MRReP in a within-subject experiment against a conventional 2D baseline interface. The results demonstrated that MRReP enhanced path specification accuracy, usability, and perceived workload, while enabling more stable path specification in the physical environment. These findings suggest that direct path specification in MR is an effective approach for incorporating human spatial intention into mobile robot navigation. Additional material is available at https://mertcookimg.github.io/mrrep