316 research outputs found
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
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
TeLeMan: Teleoperation for Legged Robot Loco-Manipulation using Wearable IMU-based Motion Capture
Human life is invaluable. When dangerous or life-threatening tasks need to be completed, robotic platforms could be ideal in replacing human operators. Such a task that we focus on in this work is the Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Robot telepresence has the potential to provide safety solutions, given that mobile robots have shown robust capabilities when operating in several environments. However, autonomy may be challenging and risky at this stage, compared to human operation. Teleoperation could be a compromise between full robot autonomy and human presence. In this paper, we present a relatively cheap solution for telepresence and robot teleoperation, to assist with Explosive Ordnance Disposal, using a legged manipulator (i.e., a legged quadruped robot, embedded with a manipulator and RGB-D sensing). We propose a novel system integration for the non-trivial problem of quadruped manipulator whole-body control. Our system is based on a wearable IMU-based motion capture system that is used for teleoperation and a VR headset for visual telepresence. We experimentally validate our method in real-world, for loco-manipulation tasks that require whole-body robot control and visual telepresence
Haptics in Robot-Assisted Surgery: Challenges and Benefits
Robotic surgery is transforming the current surgical practice, not only by improving the conventional surgical methods but also by introducing innovative robot-enhanced approaches that broaden the capabilities of clinicians. Being mainly of man-machine collaborative type, surgical robots are seen as media that transfer pre- and intra-operative information to the operator and reproduce his/her motion, with appropriate filtering, scaling, or limitation, to physically interact with the patient. The field, however, is far from maturity and, more critically, is still a subject of controversy in medical communities. Limited or absent haptic feedback is reputed to be among reasons that impede further spread of surgical robots. In this paper objectives and challenges of deploying haptic technologies in surgical robotics is discussed and a systematic review is performed on works that have studied the effects of providing haptic information to the users in major branches of robotic surgery. It has been tried to encompass both classical works and the state of the art approaches, aiming at delivering a comprehensive and balanced survey both for researchers starting their work in this field and for the experts
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
Haptic Guidance for Extended Range Telepresence
A novel navigation assistance for extended range telepresence is presented. The haptic information from the target environment is augmented with guidance commands to assist the user in reaching desired goals in the arbitrarily large target environment from the spatially restricted user environment. Furthermore, a semi-mobile haptic interface was developed, one whose lightweight design and setup configuration atop the user provide for an absolutely safe operation and high force display quality
ISMCR 1994: Topical Workshop on Virtual Reality. Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics
This symposium on measurement and control in robotics included sessions on: (1) rendering, including tactile perception and applied virtual reality; (2) applications in simulated medical procedures and telerobotics; (3) tracking sensors in a virtual environment; (4) displays for virtual reality applications; (5) sensory feedback including a virtual environment application with partial gravity simulation; and (6) applications in education, entertainment, technical writing, and animation
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