Redirected Walks through the European XFEL (ReWaX)

Reinhardt Bacher, DESY
Eike Langbehn, HAW Hamburg

Robot MARVIN3
Picture: A. Dehne

At modern particle accelerators, robots are playing an increasingly important role in facility inspection and maintenance to significantly improve the working conditions of technicians and scientists. Robot teleoperation using virtual reality (VR) technology and 3D user interfaces (3DUI) offer a faster, more accurate, and more secure way to teleoperate robots in hazardous environments.

However, 3DUIs must be designed accessible, comfortable, easy-to-learn and easy-to-operate. Therefore, interaction techniques are required that support natural and direct movement controls. Redirected walking (RDW) is a VR locomotion technique that enables free natural walking in confined real-world tracking spaces by imperceptibly guiding the user on paths in the real world that differ from those perceived in the virtual environment.

In this project, we integrate RDW algorithms into a robotic platform and evaluate this setup in a maintenance task at DESY’s accelerator tunnels.