Ground verification of the feasibility of telepresent on-orbit servicing

In an ideal case telepresence achieves a state in which a human operator can no longer differentiate between an interaction with a real environment and a technical mediated one. This state is called transparent telepresence. The applicability of telepresence to on-orbit servicing (OOS), i.e., an unmanned servicing operation in space, teleoperated from ground in real time, is verified in this paper. For this purpose, a communication test environment was set up on the ground, which involved the Institute of Astronautics (LRT) ground station in Garching, Germany, and the European Space Agency (ESA) ground station in Redu, Belgium. Both were connected via the geostationary ESA data relay satellite ARTEMIS. Utilizing the data relay satellite, a teleoperation was accomplished in which the human operator as well as the (space) teleoperator was located on the ground. The feasibility of telepresent OOS was evaluated, using an OOS test bed at the Institute of Mechatronics and Robotics at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The manipulation task was representative for OOS and supported real-time feedback from the haptic-visual workspace. The tests showed that complex manipulation tasks can be fulfilled by utilizing geostationary data relay satellites. For verifying the feasibility of telepresent OOS, different evaluation methods were used. The properties of the space link were measured and related to subjective perceptions of participants, who had to fulfill manipulation tasks. An evaluation of the transparency of the system, including the data relay satellite, was accomplished as well

A Novel Haptic Interface for Free Locomotion in Extended Range Telepresence Scenarios

Telepresence gives a user the impression of actually being present in a distant environment. A mobile teleoperator acts as a proxy in this target environment, replicates the user\u27s motion, and records sensory information, which is transferred to the user and displayed in real-time. As a result the user is immersed in the target environment. The user can then control the teleoperator by walking naturally. Motion Compression, a nonlinear mapping between the user\u27s and the robot\u27s motion, allows exploration of large target environments even from small user environments. For manipulation tasks haptic feedback is important. However, current haptic displays do not allow wide-area motion. In this work we present our design of a novel haptic display for simultaneous wide area motion and haptic interaction

Congestion Control for Network-Aware Telehaptic Communication

Telehaptic applications involve delay-sensitive multimedia communication between remote locations with distinct Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for different media components. These QoS constraints pose a variety of challenges, especially when the communication occurs over a shared network, with unknown and time-varying cross-traffic. In this work, we propose a transport layer congestion control protocol for telehaptic applications operating over shared networks, termed as dynamic packetization module (DPM). DPM is a lossless, network-aware protocol which tunes the telehaptic packetization rate based on the level of congestion in the network. To monitor the network congestion, we devise a novel network feedback module, which communicates the end-to-end delays encountered by the telehaptic packets to the respective transmitters with negligible overhead. Via extensive simulations, we show that DPM meets the QoS requirements of telehaptic applications over a wide range of network cross-traffic conditions. We also report qualitative results of a real-time telepottery experiment with several human subjects, which reveal that DPM preserves the quality of telehaptic activity even under heavily congested network scenarios. Finally, we compare the performance of DPM with several previously proposed telehaptic communication protocols and demonstrate that DPM outperforms these protocols.Comment: 25 pages, 19 figure

Integration of Kinesthetic and Tactile Display: A Modular Design Concept

This paper describes the systematic design of a modular setup for several integrated kinesthetic and cutaneous (tactile) display configurations. The proposed modular integration of a kinesthetic display and several tactile displays in serial configuration provides a versatile experimental setup to explore the integration of the kinesthetic and tactile modality of the human perception. The kinesthetic base display is a hyper-redundant device and sufficiently powerful to carry each of the compact tactile displays. In addition to a detailed description of the partly novel displays, a series of preliminary evaluation experiments is presented

Development of Interactive Simulator for Telepresence Robot in Surgical Applications

The purpose of this Diploma thesis is to develop and implement an interactive simulator for a surgical robot in a Telepresence application. The focus is on an incision procedure of a scalpel during an operation. The geometric deformation of the simulation is based on a Finite Element Method (FEM) model which has to cope with discontinuity due to the incision through the body. The FEM modelling can be done using e.g. FEM with remeshing method or XFEM which treats the cut in the body as a type of material discontinuity. A detailed analyse of the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) and a comparison to the FEM with remeshing is made. For the implementation of simulation, a FEM remeshing method is used. A scalpel mounted to the end effector of a robot is controlled by a Haptic device and cuts through a silicone block. The deformation of the real test object are measured by a 2D scanning device and compared to the results of the simulation. The deviation of the reality and simulation were less than 1% based on the dimension of the body

Visualisasi 3Dimensi untuk Memperkaya Pengoperasian Jarak Jauh dengan Mengunakan Kamera Webcam

Pada pengendalian robot jarak jauh, dibutuhkan informasi mengenai sekitar dari robot. Informasi ini mambuat operator dapat mengendalikan robotnya dengan lebih baik. Informasi visual adalah  informasi yang paling banyak digunakan oleh sistem pengoperasian robot jarak jauh. Informasi visual yang digunakan sebagian besar masih menggunakan informasi dua dimensi. Robot menggunakan sebuah kamera dan operator melihat informasi dari sebuah layar monitor. Hal ini memiliki kekurangan antara lain operator tidak mendapatkan efek kedalaman sehingga operator memiliki kesulitn untuk mengira jarak antara robot dan objek didepannya. Kekurangan ini dapat diselesaikan dengan menggunakan sistem visual tiga dimensi. Namun sistem ini membutuhkan kamera stereo yang tidak murah. Penelitian ini meneliti sebuah sistem yang mengunakan dua buah webcam yang terhubung dengan sebuah komputer, dan operator dapat merasakan sensasi 3 dimensi dengan menggunakan sebuah Virtual reality headset Kamera-kamera ini diletakan pada dua motor steper sehingga digerakan keatas-kebawah serta samping kiri dan kanan. Kemampuan gerak ini membuat operator mendapat informasi mengenai keadaan sekeliling dari robot. Motor-motor ini dikendalikan dari headset  sehingga memudahkan operator. Sistem ini diharapkan dapat digunakan pada robot yang dikendalikan jarak jauh sehingga operator dapat mengoperasikan robot lebih baik lagi

Transparency in Port-Hamiltonian-Based Telemanipulation

After stability, transparency is the major issue in the design of a telemanipulation system. In this paper, we exploit the behavioral approach in order to provide an index for the evaluation of transparency in port-Hamiltonian-based teleoperators. Furthermore, we provide a transparency analysis of packet switching scattering-based communication channels