The Shape of Damping: Optimizing Damping Coefficients to Improve Transparency on Bilateral Telemanipulation

This thesis presents a novel optimization-based passivity control algorithm for hapticenabled bilateral teleoperation systems involving multiple degrees of freedom. In particular, in the context of energy-bounding control, the contribution focuses on the implementation of a passivity layer for an existing time-domain scheme, ensuring optimal transparency of the interaction along subsets of the environment space which are preponderant for the given task, while preserving the energy bounds required for passivity. The involved optimization problem is convex and amenable to real-time implementation. The effectiveness of the proposed design is validated via an experiment performed on a virtual teleoperated environment. The interplay between transparency and stability is a critical aspect in haptic-enabled bilateral teleoperation control. While it is important to present the user with the true impedance of the environment, destabilizing factors such as time delays, stiff environments, and a relaxed grasp on the master device may compromise the stability and safety of the system. Passivity has been exploited as one of the the main tools for providing sufficient conditions for stable teleoperation in several controller design approaches, such as the scattering algorithm, timedomain passivity control, energy bounding algorithm, and passive set position modulation. In this work it is presented an innovative energy-based approach, which builds upon existing time-domain passivity controllers, improving and extending their effectiveness and functionality. The set of damping coefficients are prioritized in each degree of freedom, the resulting transparency presents a realistic force feedback in comparison to the other directions. Thus, the prioritization takes effect using a quadratic programming algorithm to find the optimal values for the damping. Finally, the energy tanks approach on passivity control is a solution used to ensure stability in a system for robotics bilateral manipulation. The bilateral telemanipulation must maintain the principle of passivity in all moments to preserve the system\u2019s stability. This work presents a brief introduction to haptic devices as a master component on the telemanipulation chain; the end effector in the slave side is a representation of an interactive object within an environment having a force sensor as feedback signal. The whole interface is designed into a cross-platform framework named ROS, where the user interacts with the system. Experimental results are presented

Development and evaluation of mixed reality-enhanced robotic systems for intuitive tele-manipulation and telemanufacturing tasks in hazardous conditions

In recent years, with the rapid development of space exploration, deep-sea discovery, nuclear rehabilitation and management, and robotic-assisted medical devices, there is an urgent need for humans to interactively control robotic systems to perform increasingly precise remote operations. The value of medical telerobotic applications during the recent coronavirus pandemic has also been demonstrated and will grow in the future. This thesis investigates novel approaches to the development and evaluation of a mixed reality-enhanced telerobotic platform for intuitive remote teleoperation applications in dangerous and difficult working conditions, such as contaminated sites and undersea or extreme welding scenarios. This research aims to remove human workers from the harmful working environments by equipping complex robotic systems with human intelligence and command/control via intuitive and natural human-robot- interaction, including the implementation of MR techniques to improve the user's situational awareness, depth perception, and spatial cognition, which are fundamental to effective and efficient teleoperation. The proposed robotic mobile manipulation platform consists of a UR5 industrial manipulator, 3D-printed parallel gripper, and customized mobile base, which is envisaged to be controlled by non-skilled operators who are physically separated from the robot working space through an MR-based vision/motion mapping approach. The platform development process involved CAD/CAE/CAM and rapid prototyping techniques, such as 3D printing and laser cutting. Robot Operating System (ROS) and Unity 3D are employed in the developing process to enable the embedded system to intuitively control the robotic system and ensure the implementation of immersive and natural human-robot interactive teleoperation. This research presents an integrated motion/vision retargeting scheme based on a mixed reality subspace approach for intuitive and immersive telemanipulation. An imitation-based velocity- centric motion mapping is implemented via the MR subspace to accurately track operator hand movements for robot motion control, and enables spatial velocity-based control of the robot tool center point (TCP). The proposed system allows precise manipulation of end-effector position and orientation to readily adjust the corresponding velocity of maneuvering. A mixed reality-based multi-view merging framework for immersive and intuitive telemanipulation of a complex mobile manipulator with integrated 3D/2D vision is presented. The proposed 3D immersive telerobotic schemes provide the users with depth perception through the merging of multiple 3D/2D views of the remote environment via MR subspace. The mobile manipulator platform can be effectively controlled by non-skilled operators who are physically separated from the robot working space through a velocity-based imitative motion mapping approach. Finally, this thesis presents an integrated mixed reality and haptic feedback scheme for intuitive and immersive teleoperation of robotic welding systems. By incorporating MR technology, the user is fully immersed in a virtual operating space augmented by real-time visual feedback from the robot working space. The proposed mixed reality virtual fixture integration approach implements hybrid haptic constraints to guide the operator’s hand movements following the conical guidance to effectively align the welding torch for welding and constrain the welding operation within a collision-free area. Overall, this thesis presents a complete tele-robotic application space technology using mixed reality and immersive elements to effectively translate the operator into the robot’s space in an intuitive and natural manner. The results are thus a step forward in cost-effective and computationally effective human-robot interaction research and technologies. The system presented is readily extensible to a range of potential applications beyond the robotic tele- welding and tele-manipulation tasks used to demonstrate, optimise, and prove the concepts

Electrotactile feedback applications for hand and arm interactions: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and future directions

Haptic feedback is critical in a broad range of human-machine/computer-interaction applications. However, the high cost and low portability/wearability of haptic devices remain unresolved issues, severely limiting the adoption of this otherwise promising technology. Electrotactile interfaces have the advantage of being more portable and wearable due to their reduced actuators' size, as well as their lower power consumption and manufacturing cost. The applications of electrotactile feedback have been explored in human-computer interaction and human-machine-interaction for facilitating hand-based interactions in applications such as prosthetics, virtual reality, robotic teleoperation, surface haptics, portable devices, and rehabilitation. This paper presents a technological overview of electrotactile feedback, as well a systematic review and meta-analysis of its applications for hand-based interactions. We discuss the different electrotactile systems according to the type of application. We also discuss over a quantitative congregation of the findings, to offer a high-level overview into the state-of-art and suggest future directions. Electrotactile feedback systems showed increased portability/wearability, and they were successful in rendering and/or augmenting most tactile sensations, eliciting perceptual processes, and improving performance in many scenarios. However, knowledge gaps (e.g., embodiment), technical (e.g., recurrent calibration, electrodes' durability) and methodological (e.g., sample size) drawbacks were detected, which should be addressed in future studies.Comment: 18 pages, 1 table, 8 figures, under review in Transactions on Haptics. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.Upon acceptance of the article by IEEE, the preprint article will be replaced with the accepted versio

Adaptive Shared Autonomy between Human and Robot to Assist Mobile Robot Teleoperation

Die Teleoperation vom mobilen Roboter wird in großem Umfang eingesetzt, wenn es für Mensch unpraktisch oder undurchführbar ist, anwesend zu sein, aber die Entscheidung von Mensch wird dennoch verlangt. Es ist für Mensch stressig und fehleranfällig wegen Zeitverzögerung und Abwesenheit des Situationsbewusstseins, ohne Unterstützung den Roboter zu steuern einerseits, andererseits kann der völlig autonome Roboter, trotz jüngsten Errungenschaften, noch keine Aufgabe basiert auf die aktuellen Modelle der Wahrnehmung und Steuerung unabhängig ausführen. Deswegen müssen beide der Mensch und der Roboter in der Regelschleife bleiben, um gleichzeitig Intelligenz zur Durchführung von Aufgaben beizutragen. Das bedeut, dass der Mensch die Autonomie mit dem Roboter während des Betriebes zusammenhaben sollte. Allerdings besteht die Herausforderung darin, die beiden Quellen der Intelligenz vom Mensch und dem Roboter am besten zu koordinieren, um eine sichere und effiziente Aufgabenausführung in der Fernbedienung zu gewährleisten. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit eine neuartige Strategie vorgeschlagen. Sie modelliert die Benutzerabsicht als eine kontextuelle Aufgabe, um eine Aktionsprimitive zu vervollständigen, und stellt dem Bediener eine angemessene Bewegungshilfe bei der Erkennung der Aufgabe zur Verfügung. Auf diese Weise bewältigt der Roboter intelligent mit den laufenden Aufgaben auf der Grundlage der kontextuellen Informationen, entlastet die Arbeitsbelastung des Bedieners und verbessert die Aufgabenleistung. Um diese Strategie umzusetzen und die Unsicherheiten bei der Erfassung und Verarbeitung von Umgebungsinformationen und Benutzereingaben (i.e. der Kontextinformationen) zu berücksichtigen, wird ein probabilistischer Rahmen von Shared Autonomy eingeführt, um die kontextuelle Aufgabe mit Unsicherheitsmessungen zu erkennen, die der Bediener mit dem Roboter durchführt, und dem Bediener die angemesse Unterstützung der Aufgabenausführung nach diesen Messungen anzubieten. Da die Weise, wie der Bediener eine Aufgabe ausführt, implizit ist, ist es nicht trivial, das Bewegungsmuster der Aufgabenausführung manuell zu modellieren, so dass eine Reihe von der datengesteuerten Ansätzen verwendet wird, um das Muster der verschiedenen Aufgabenausführungen von menschlichen Demonstrationen abzuleiten, sich an die Bedürfnisse des Bedieners in einer intuitiven Weise über lange Zeit anzupassen. Die Praxistauglichkeit und Skalierbarkeit der vorgeschlagenen Ansätze wird durch umfangreiche Experimente sowohl in der Simulation als auch auf dem realen Roboter demonstriert. Mit den vorgeschlagenen Ansätzen kann der Bediener aktiv und angemessen unterstützt werden, indem die Kognitionsfähigkeit und Autonomieflexibilität des Roboters zu erhöhen

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Haptics Rendering and Applications

There has been significant progress in haptic technologies but the incorporation of haptics into virtual environments is still in its infancy. A wide range of the new society's human activities including communication, education, art, entertainment, commerce and science would forever change if we learned how to capture, manipulate and reproduce haptic sensory stimuli that are nearly indistinguishable from reality. For the field to move forward, many commercial and technological barriers need to be overcome. By rendering how objects feel through haptic technology, we communicate information that might reflect a desire to speak a physically- based language that has never been explored before. Due to constant improvement in haptics technology and increasing levels of research into and development of haptics-related algorithms, protocols and devices, there is a belief that haptics technology has a promising future

Human Machine Interfaces for Teleoperators and Virtual Environments

In Mar. 1990, a meeting organized around the general theme of teleoperation research into virtual environment display technology was conducted. This is a collection of conference-related fragments that will give a glimpse of the potential of the following fields and how they interplay: sensorimotor performance; human-machine interfaces; teleoperation; virtual environments; performance measurement and evaluation methods; and design principles and predictive models

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020. The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topical sections on haptic science, haptic technology, and haptic applications. This year's focus is on accessibility

Using binaural audio for inducing intersensory illusions to create illusory tactile feedback in virtual reality

Virtual reality has the potential to simulate a variety of real-world scenarios for training- and entertainment-purposes, as it has the ability to induce a sense of “presence”: the illusion that the user is physically transported to another location and is really “there”. VR and VR-technologies have seen a recent market resurgence due to the arrival of affordable, mass-market VR-display systems, such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Samsung GearVR, and Google Cardboard. However, the use of tactile feedback to convey information about the virtual environment is often lacking in VR applications. This study addresses this lack by proposing the use of binaural audio in VR to induce illusory tactile feedback. This is done by examining the literature on intersensory illusions as well as the relationship between audio and tactile feedback to inform the design of a software prototype that is able to induce the desired feedback. This prototype is used to test the viability of such an approach to induce illusory tactile feedback and to investigate the nature of this feedback. The software prototype is used to collect data from users regarding their experiences of this type of feedback and its underlying causes. Data collection is done through observation, questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups and the results indicate that the use of binaural audio in VR can be used to effectively induce an illusory sense of tactile feedback in the absence of real-world feedback. This study contributes insights regarding the nature of illusory sensations in VR, focusing on touch-sensations. This study also provides consolidated definitions of immersion and presence as well as a consolidated list of aspects of immersion, both of which are used to detail the relationship between immersion, presence, and illusory tactile feedback. Findings provide insight into the relationship between the design of audio in VR and its ability to alter perception in the tactile modality. Findings also provide insight into aspects of VR, such as presence and believability, and their relationship to perception across various sensory modalities.Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria 2018.Information ScienceMISUnrestricte