Novel Interactive Techniques for Bimanual Manipulation of 3D Objects with Two 3DoF Haptic Interfaces

International audienceThis paper presents a set of novel interactive techniques adapted to two-handed manipulation of objects with dual 3DoF single-point haptic devices. We first propose the double bubble for bimanual haptic exploration of virtual environments through hybrid position/rate controls, and a bimanual viewport adaptation method that keeps both proxies on screen in large environments. We also present two bimanual haptic manipulation techniques that facilitate pick-and-place tasks: the joint control, which forces common control modes and control/display ratios for two interfaces grabbing an object, and the magnetic pinch, which simulates a magnet-like attraction between both hands to prevent unwanted drops of that object. An experiment was conducted to assess the efficiency of these techniques for pick-and-place tasks, by comparing the double bubble with viewport adaptation to the clutching technique for extending the workspaces, and by measuring the benefits of the joint control and magnetic pinch

Kinesthetic Haptics Sensing and Discovery with Bilateral Teleoperation Systems

In the mechanical engineering field of robotics, bilateral teleoperation is a classic but still increasing research topic. In bilateral teleoperation, a human operator moves the master manipulator, and a slave manipulator is controlled to follow the motion of the master in a remote, potentially hostile environment. This dissertation focuses on kinesthetic perception analysis in teleoperation systems. Design of the controllers of the systems is studied as the influential factor of this issue. The controllers that can provide different force tracking capability are compared using the same experimental protocol. A 6 DOF teleoperation system is configured as the system testbed. An innovative master manipulator is developed and a 7 DOF redundant manipulator is used as the slave robot. A singularity avoidance inverse kinematics algorithm is developed to resolve the redundancy of the slave manipulator. An experimental protocol is addressed and three dynamics attributes related to kineshtetic feedback are investigated: weight, center of gravity and inertia. The results support our hypothesis: the controller that can bring a better force feedback can improve the performance in the experiments