RFID-based tangible and touch tabletop for dual reality in crisis management context

Robots are becoming more and more present in many domains of our daily lives. Their usage encompasses industry, home automation, space exploration, and military operations. Robots can also be used in crisis management situations, where it is impossible to access or dangerous to send humans into the intervention area. The present work compares users’ performances on tangible and on touch user interfaces, for a crisis management application on tabletop. The studied task consists of remotely controlling robots in a simulated disaster/intervention area using a tabletop equipped with a layer of RFID antennas, by displacing mini-robots on its surface matching the situation of the real robots on the ground. Dual reality enforces an accurate and up-to-date mapping between the real robots and the mini robots on the tabletop surface. Our findings show that tangible interaction outperforms touch interaction in effectiveness, efficiency and usability, in a task of remote control of one and two robots; only when the user manipulates a single robot remains the efficiency dimension unchanged between tangible and touch interaction. Results also show that tangible interaction technique does not significantly lower the users’ workload. We finally expose a post-experiment interview and questionnaire results, assessing the participants’ overall satisfaction and agreement on using tangible objects on a tabletop.