Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
mobile robot navigation
human spatial intention
path specification
mixed reality
human-robot interaction
MRReP: Mixed Reality-based Hand-drawn Reference Path Editing Interface for Mobile Robot Navigation
🤖 AI Summary
This work addresses the challenge of effectively incorporating human spatial intent—such as avoiding crowds or maintaining comfortable interpersonal distances—into mobile robot path planning. The authors propose a mixed reality (MR)-based interaction method that enables users to directly sketch reference paths onto the physical ground using hand gestures, which are then instantly converted into globally executable trajectories for the robot. By integrating gesture recognition, a hand-drawn path planner, and a robotic navigation stack, the approach preserves environmental context while significantly improving the accuracy and usability of user-specified paths. This method reduces cognitive load on the user and enhances spatial consistency and stability of the generated paths in real-world environments.
📝 Abstract
Autonomous mobile robots operating in human-shared indoor environments often require paths that reflect human spatial intentions, such as avoiding interference with pedestrian flow or maintaining comfortable clearance. However, conventional path planners primarily optimize geometric costs and provide limited support for explicit route specification by human operators. This paper presents MRReP, a Mixed Reality-based interface that enables users to draw a Hand-drawn Reference Path (HRP) directly on the physical floor using hand gestures. The drawn HRP is integrated into the robot navigation stack through a custom Hand-drawn Reference Path Planner, which converts the user-specified point sequence into a global path for autonomous navigation. We evaluated MRReP in a within-subject experiment against a conventional 2D baseline interface. The results demonstrated that MRReP enhanced path specification accuracy, usability, and perceived workload, while enabling more stable path specification in the physical environment. These findings suggest that direct path specification in MR is an effective approach for incorporating human spatial intention into mobile robot navigation. Additional material is available at https://mertcookimg.github.io/mrrep
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Mixed Reality
Hand-drawn Reference Path
Mobile Robot Navigation
Human Spatial Intention
Path Planning
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