Let the Body Follow: Coupled Egocentric Control for Whole-Body Robot Teleoperation

2026-07-17

AI Summary

Whole-body teleoperation often suffers from high operational complexity and cognitive load due to the need to simultaneously coordinate the head, arms, torso, and mobile base under kinematic and environmental constraints. This work proposes a coupled egocentric control method that naturally maps the operator’s head orientation (pitch/yaw) and hand poses to the robot’s torso height and base translation/rotation, enabling automatic coordination between the torso and base while allowing the user to focus solely on gaze direction and hand movements. Integrated with a workspace boundary-triggering mechanism, the approach eliminates the need for explicit command inputs. Evaluated on TIAGo in home-care tasks, the method significantly improves task efficiency over baseline approaches, reduces button presses and singular configurations, lowers cognitive load, and enhances usability and user preference.

Abstract

Whole-body teleoperation requires users to coordinate perception, manipulation, posture, and mobility across multiple robot components. This coordination is difficult because users must simultaneously control the robot's head, arms, torso, and base while maintaining task awareness and avoiding kinematic or environmental constraints. In this paper, we propose coupled egocentric control, a body-following teleoperation approach in which the robot's torso and base automatically respond to the operator's head and arm motions. Rather than requiring explicit touchpad commands for every torso or base adjustment, the system lets users focus on gaze and hand control: head pitch adjusts torso height, head yaw drives base rotation, end-effector height adjusts torso motion, and end-effector workspace boundaries trigger base translation. We evaluate this approach in a user study on whole-body teleoperation of a TIAGo mobile manipulator for home-care-inspired tasks. Compared with a baseline hybrid interface, coupled egocentric control improves object manipulation efficiency, reduces button-based control effort and arm singularities, lowers mental demand and overall workload, and increases ease of use, ease of learning, confidence, and user preference for torso and base control.

Problem

• whole-body teleoperation
• human-robot interaction
• mobile manipulation
• egocentric control
• teleoperation interface

Innovation

• coupled egocentric control
• whole-body teleoperation
• body-following
• mobile manipulator
• user-centered interface