Publikation
The Role of Embodiment in Intuitive Whole-Body Teleoperation for Mobile Manipulation
Sophia Bianchi Moyen; Rickmer Krohn; Sophie Lueth; Kay Pompetzki; Jan Peters; Vignesh Prasad; Georgia Chalvatzaki
In: Computing Research Repository eprint Journal (CoRR), Vol. abs/2509.03222, Pages 1-8, arXiv, 2025.
Zusammenfassung
Intuitive Teleoperation interfaces are essential for
mobile manipulation robots to ensure high quality data col-
lection while reducing operator workload. A strong sense of
embodiment combined with minimal physical and cognitive
demands not only enhances the user experience during large-
scale data collection, but also helps maintain data quality
over extended periods. This becomes especially crucial for
challenging long-horizon mobile manipulation tasks that re-
quire whole-body coordination. We compare two distinct robot
control paradigms: a coupled embodiment integrating arm
manipulation and base navigation functions, and a decoupled
embodiment treating these systems as separate control entities.
Additionally, we evaluate two visual feedback mechanisms:
immersive virtual reality and conventional screen-based vi-
sualization of the robot’s field of view. These configurations
were systematically assessed across a complex, multi-stage
task sequence requiring integrated planning and execution.
Our results show that the use of VR as a feedback modal-
ity increases task completion time, cognitive workload, and
perceived effort of the teleoperator. Coupling manipulation
and navigation leads to a comparable workload on the user
as decoupling the embodiments, while preliminary experi-
ments suggest that data acquired by coupled teleoperation
leads to better imitation learning performance. Our holistic
view on intuitive teleoperation interfaces provides valuable
insight into collecting high-quality, high-dimensional mobile
manipulation data at scale with the human operator in
mind. Project website: https://sophiamoyen.github.
io/role-embodiment-wbc-moma-teleop/