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This report introduces a behavioral cybernetic analysis of performance difficulties inherent to teleoperation. From this perspective, the assumption is that such difficulties arise as a consequence of a degradation in the fidelity of behavioral feedback control. Conceptual and empirical evidence is presented for the conclusion that spatiotemporal perturbations in sensory feedback, specific to human factors design of the task and interface, degrade behavioral control of sensory feedback and thereby critically compromise teleoperation performance. In support of this conclusion, results from a large body of experimental evidence compiled over the past four decades are summarized to indicate that both delays and spatial displacements in sensory feedback engender substantial decrements in hands-on performance, which training does not completely overcome.

Teleoperation of mobile equipment is attracting growing interest as a safe and viable technological means of allowing humans to perform work in hazardous environments without compromising safety and health. Relative to telemanipulation, which has been more intensively studied, mobile equipment teleoperation poses distinct operational challenges, because the mobile device must be navigated and controlled by the remote operator during dynamic interaction with often unpredictable terrain and sensory environments. This report evaluates this issue from the perspective of behavioral cybernetics, with a focus on the closed-loop control properties of behavioral performance and how and why such control may be compromised during teleoperation of mobile equipment. The conceptual paradigm adopted in the paper is to treat a mobile device during onboard operation as an exoskeleton, a structural and functional extension of the operator's own body.