This work describes a set of engineering innovations, scientific contributions and an evaluation methodology in the field of telerobotics. Engineering innovations include:​ design and construction of an interactive, virtual tools system;​ and development of a video engraving technology. Scientific contributions include experiments that demonstrate how surface textures, such as those provided by the video engraving technology, improve depth perception. An inferred advantage evaluation methodology was developed for choosing which of several subtechnologies to improve in novel systems such as the virtual tools based telerobotic workcell.

The virtual tools, controlled using an instrumented glove, provide a powerful means for an operator to interactively point and direct tasks at the object level in unstructured live video environments. Camera images and virtual tools are interwoven in a customized, three-dimensional, videographic world. Video engraving integrates patches of surface textures, taken from live video, with surfaces of objects that are geometrically modeled. The operator can then view the fused video and model information from any viewpoint, with the video information stretched to fit as viewpoint shifts - so that no new camera images are needed.

Four psychophysical experiments use the method of adjustment to demonstrate how surface texture improve subjects’ perception of stereoscopic depth. The experiments showed that:​ 1) people poorly estimate the stereoscopic depth of homogeneous, horizontal targets;​ 2) depth estimates improve if the object’s surface is textured;​ 3) several limitations apply to the benefits of texture patterns;​ and 4) textures must be set at the stereoscopic depth of the surface for the texturing benefit to be realized.

Workcell improvements led to development of an inferred advantage methodology. A complex system is modeled as several subsystems, and then the efficacy of improving various subsystems is indirectly tested. The advantage of improving each subsystem is inferred by degrading each subsystem, a feat that is generally easier than making improvements, and then the results are observed and extrapolated forward to assess potential benefits of comparable, harder to obtain, improvements.