When Vision Deceives: The Compensatory Role of Passive Haptics in Mitigating Sim2Real Gap During Teleoperation Assembly

Abstract

In model-mediated teleoperation (MMT), network latency and sensor drift often cause discrepancies between visual rendering and actual physical states (the Sim2Real gap), compromising safety and increasing cognitive load. To investigate the compensatory role of kinesthetic feedback, this study developed a modular insertion platform incorporating 3D-printed physical proxiesand compared visual feedback (VF)with passive haptic feedback (PH) under deliberate visual registration errors across different difficulty levels. Analysis of 24 participants showed thatPH reduced command/penetration deviation and acceleratedexploratory procedures at medium-to-high difficulty levels, enhancing safety and efficiency. NASA-TLX and MPQ results showed reduced overall task load and enhanced presence for most operators. Exploratory outlier analysis identified two participants who appeared to rely more heavily on vision and experienced increased cognitive load under inflexible physical constraints.These findings provide empirical guidance for industrial MMT interface design.