Haptic Guidance Using Electrical Muscle Stimulation for Gesture-based Mobile Robot Teleoperation

In this paper, we propose a virtual reality (VR)-based teleoperation system that utilizes Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) to provide haptic guidance for gesture-based mobile robot control. We develop an operator-independent, posture-aware regression model that predicts wrist movement directions induced by EMS across the control space. This estimation model is integrated into a VR teleoperation system that evaluates obstacle proximity and actuates the user’s muscles to safely steer their gestures away from obstacles, thereby preventing collisions. To validate the efficacy of the proposed system, we conducted a user study comparing EMS guidance, vibration guidance, and no-guidance conditions for a mobile robot teleoperation task. The study revealed that our system provides two distinct benefits. First, as a shared control interface, it significantly improved navigation safety. Second, participants who underwent EMS training maintained improved navigation performance even without guidance. These findings indicate that the proposed method functions effectively as a real-time safety mechanism while supporting the internalization of safer control strategies.