Teleoperating rovers in unstructured environments (eg, Lunar or Martian surface) is often challenging for the human operator. These scenarios frequently lead to a high mental workload, erroneous perceptions of the environment, and faulty decision-making. We present the system architecture of a novel haptic teleoperation interface to improve the interaction with remotely operated rovers in the domain of planetary exploration. With the proposed approach, the operator can control both the robotic arm and the rover’s locomotion with a 7-DoF force feedback device (sigma. 7) depending on the operation mode (manipulation or locomotion). Moreover, while standard haptic devices for teleoperation only display one type of stimuli (eg, contact forces), the proposed interface displays three distinct haptic stimuli:(1) force (during manipulation tasks, eg, rock-picking),(2) proprioceptive (emulate the inclination of the rover while traversing rough terrains), and (3) vibration (convey traction losses during locomotion). Finally, we present a qualitative discussion from preliminary test with users operating the Interact rover with our multimodal teleoperation concept.

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