Bilateral haptic teleoperation of an articulated track mobile robot

Teleoperation has been used in many applications, allowing a human operator to remotely control a robotic system in order to perform a particular task. Recently haptic teleoperation has focused mainly on improving performance in remote manipulation tasks, however the haptic approach offers similar advantages for teleoperative control of the motion of a mobile robot. This paper describes a prototype system designed to facilitate haptic teleoperation of an all-terrain, articulated track mobile robot. This system utilizes a multi-modal user interface intended to improve operator immersion, reduce operator overload and improve teleoperative task performance. The system architecture facilitates implementation of an application-specific haptic augmentation algorithm in order to improve operator performance in challenging real-world tasks. The contributions of this work can be categorized as the custom mobile platform, teleoperator interface and haptic augmentation strategy.<br /

Intuitive haptic control surface for mobile robot motion control

Haptic human-machine interfaces and similar techniques to enhancing human-robotic interaction offer significant potential over conventional approaches. This work considers achieving intuitive motion control of a tracked mobile robotic platform utilising a 3D virtual haptic cone. The 3D haptic cone extends upon existing approaches by introducing of a third dimension to the haptic control surface. It is suggested that this approach improves upon existing methods by providing the human operator with an intuitive method for issuing vehicle motion commands whilst still facilitating simultaneous real-time haptic augmentation regarding the task at hand. The presented approach is considered in the context of mobile robotic teleoperation however offers potential across many applications. Using the 2D haptic control surface as a benchmark, preliminary evaluation of the 3D haptic cone approach demonstrates a significant improvement in the ability to command the robot to cease motion.<br /

3D virtual haptic cone for intuitive vehicle motion control

Haptic human-machine interfaces and interaction techniques have been shown to offer advantages over conventional approaches. This work introduces the 3D virtual haptic cone with the aim of improving human remote control of a vehicle\u27s motion. The 3D cone introduces a third dimension to the haptic control surface over existing approaches. This approach improves upon existing methods by providing the human operator with an intuitive method for issuing vehicle motion commands whilst simultaneously receiving real-time haptic information from the remote system. The presented approach offers potential across many applications, and as a case study, this work considers the approach in the context of mobile robot motion control. The performance of the approach in providing the operator with improved motion controllability is evaluated and the performance improvement determined.<br /

Fuzzy haptic augmentation for telerobotic stair climbing

Teleoperated robotic systems provide a valuable solution for the exploration of hazardous environments. The ability to explore dangerous environments from the safety of a remote location represents an important progression towards the preservation of human safety in the inevitable response to such a threat. While the benefits of removing physical human presence are clear, challenges associated with remote operation of a robotic system need to be addressed. Removing direct human presence from the robot\u27s operating environment introduces telepresence as an important consideration in achieving the desired objective. The introduction of the haptic modality represents one approach towards improving operator performance subject to reduced telepresence. When operating in an urban environment, teleoperative stair climbing is not an uncommon scenario. This work investigates the operation of an articulated track mobile robot designed for ascending stairs under teleoperative control. In order to assist the teleoperator in improved navigational capabilities, a fuzzy expert system is utilised to provide the teleoperator with intelligent haptic augmentation with the aim of improving task performance. <br /

Haptic control methodologies for telerobotic stair traversal

Teleoperated mobile robots provide the ability for a human operator to safely explore and evaluate hazardous environments. This ability represents an important progression towards the preservation of human safety in the inevitable response to situations such as terrorist activities and urban search and rescue. The benefits of removing physical human presence from such environments are obvious, however challenges inhibiting task performance when remotely operating a mobile robotic system need to be addressed. The removal of physical human presence from the target environment introduces telepresence as a vital consideration in achieving the desired objective. Introducing haptic human-robotic interaction represents one approach towards improving operator performance in such a scenario. Teleoperative stair traversal proves to be a challenging task when undertaking threat response in an urban environment. This article investigates the teleoperation of an articulated track mobile robot designed for traversing stairs in a threat response scenario. Utilising a haptic medium for bilateral human-robotic interaction, the haptic cone methodology is introduced with the aim of providing the operator with a vision-independent, intuitive indication of the current commanded robot velocity. The haptic cone methodology operates synergistically with the introduced fuzzy-haptic augmentation for improving teleoperator performance in the stair traversal scenario.<br /

3D virtual haptic cone for intuitive vehicle motion control

Haptic technology provides the ability for a system to recreate the sense of touch to a human operator, and as such offers wide reaching advantages. The ability to interact with the human\u27s tactual modality introduces haptic human-machine interaction to replace or augment existing mediums such as visual and audible information. A distinct advantage of haptic human-machine interaction is the intrinsic bilateral nature, where information can be communicated in both directions simultaneously. This paper investigates the bilateral nature of the haptic interface in controlling the motion of a remote (or virtual) vehicle and presents the ability to provide an additional dimension of haptic information to the user over existing approaches [1-4]. The 3D virtual haptic cone offers the ability to not only provide the user with relevant haptic augmentation pertaining to the task at hand, as do existing approaches, however, to also simultaneously provide an intuitive indication of the current velocities being commanded.<br /

Dynamic Mobile Manipulation via Whole-Body Bilateral Teleoperation of a Wheeled Humanoid

Humanoid robots have the potential to help human workers by realizing physically demanding manipulation tasks such as moving large boxes within warehouses. We define such tasks as Dynamic Mobile Manipulation (DMM). This paper presents a framework for DMM via whole-body teleoperation, built upon three key contributions: Firstly, a teleoperation framework employing a Human Machine Interface (HMI) and a bi-wheeled humanoid, SATYRR, is proposed. Secondly, the study introduces a dynamic locomotion mapping, utilizing human-robot reduced order models, and a kinematic retargeting strategy for manipulation tasks. Additionally, the paper discusses the role of whole-body haptic feedback for wheeled humanoid control. Finally, the system's effectiveness and mappings for DMM are validated through locomanipulation experiments and heavy box pushing tasks. Here we show two forms of DMM: grasping a target moving at an average speed of 0.4 m/s, and pushing boxes weighing up to 105\% of the robot's weight. By simultaneously adjusting their pitch and using their arms, the pilot adjusts the robot pose to apply larger contact forces and move a heavy box at a constant velocity of 0.2 m/s

Exploiting ungrounded tactile haptic displays for mobile robotic teleoperation

Teleoperated mobile robotics offer potential use in a variety of different real-world applications including hazardous materials handling, urban search and rescue and explosive ordnance handling and disposal. Recent research discusses the use of Haptic technology in increasing task immersion and teleoperator performance. This work investigates the utility of low-cost, ungrounded tactile haptic interfaces in mobile robotic teleoperation. In order to achieve the desired implementation using only tactile sensation presents distinct challenges. Innovative haptic control methodologies providing the teleoperator with intuitive motion control and task-relevant haptic augmentation are presented within this paper.<br /

Modeling and control of UAV bearing formations with bilateral high-level steering

In this paper we address the problem of controlling the motion of a group of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) bound to keep a formation defined in terms of only relative angles (i.e. a bearing formation). This problem can naturally arise within the context of several multi-robot applications such as, e.g. exploration, coverage, and surveillance. First, we introduce and thoroughly analyze the concept and properties of bearing formations, and provide a class of minimally linear sets of bearings sufficient to uniquely define such formations. We then propose a bearing-only formation controller requiring only bearing measurements, converging almost globally, and maintaining bounded inter-agent distances despite the lack of direct metric information.The controller still leaves the possibility of imposing group motions tangent to the current bearing formation. These can be either autonomously chosen by the robots because of any additional task (e.g. exploration), or exploited by an assisting human co-operator. For this latter 'human-in-the-loop' case, we propose a multi-master/multi-slave bilateral shared control system providing the co-operator with some suitable force cues informative of the UAV performance. The proposed theoretical framework is extensively validated by means of simulations and experiments with quadrotor UAVs equipped with onboard cameras. Practical limitations, e.g. limited field-of-view, are also considered. © The Author(s) 2012