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

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

Ubiquitous computing and natural interfaces for environmental information

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas AmbientaisThe next computing revolution‘s objective is to embed every street, building, room and object with computational power. Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) will allow every object to receive and transmit information, sense its surroundings and act accordingly, be located from anywhere in the world, connect every person. Everyone will have the possibility to access information, despite their age, computer knowledge, literacy or physical impairment. It will impact the world in a profound way, empowering mankind, improving the environment, but will also create new challenges that our society, economy, health and global environment will have to overcome. Negative impacts have to be identified and dealt with in advance. Despite these concerns, environmental studies have been mostly absent from discussions on the new paradigm. This thesis seeks to examine ubiquitous computing, its technological emergence, raise awareness towards future impacts and explore the design of new interfaces and rich interaction modes. Environmental information is approached as an area which may greatly benefit from ubicomp as a way to gather, treat and disseminate it, simultaneously complying with the Aarhus convention. In an educational context, new media are poised to revolutionize the way we perceive, learn and interact with environmental information. cUbiq is presented as a natural interface to access that information

Augmented Reality Assistance for Surgical Interventions using Optical See-Through Head-Mounted Displays

Augmented Reality (AR) offers an interactive user experience via enhancing the real world environment with computer-generated visual cues and other perceptual information. It has been applied to different applications, e.g. manufacturing, entertainment and healthcare, through different AR media. An Optical See-Through Head-Mounted Display (OST-HMD) is a specialized hardware for AR, where the computer-generated graphics can be overlaid directly onto the user's normal vision via optical combiners. Using OST-HMD for surgical intervention has many potential perceptual advantages. As a novel concept, many technical and clinical challenges exist for OST-HMD-based AR to be clinically useful, which motivates the work presented in this thesis. From the technical aspects, we first investigate the display calibration of OST-HMD, which is an indispensable procedure to create accurate AR overlay. We propose various methods to reduce the user-related error, improve robustness of the calibration, and remodel the calibration as a 3D-3D registration problem. Secondly, we devise methods and develop hardware prototype to increase the user's visual acuity of both real and virtual content through OST-HMD, to aid them in tasks that require high visual acuity, e.g. dental procedures. Thirdly, we investigate the occlusion caused by the OST-HMD hardware, which limits the user's peripheral vision. We propose to use alternative indicators to remind the user of unattended environment motion. From the clinical perspective, we identified many clinical use cases where OST-HMD-based AR is potentially helpful, developed applications integrated with current clinical systems, and conducted proof-of-concept evaluations. We first present a "virtual monitor'' for image-guided surgery. It can replace real radiology monitors in the operating room with easier user control and more flexibility in positioning. We evaluated the "virtual monitor'' for simulated percutaneous spine procedures. Secondly, we developed ARssist, an application for the bedside assistant in robotic surgery. The assistant can see the robotic instruments and endoscope within the patient body with ARssist. We evaluated the efficiency, safety and ergonomics of the assistant during two typical tasks: instrument insertion and manipulation. The performance for inexperienced users is significantly improved with ARssist, and for experienced users, the system significantly enhanced their confidence level. Lastly, we developed ARAMIS, which utilizes real-time 3D reconstruction and visualization to aid the laparoscopic surgeon. It demonstrates the concept of "X-ray see-through'' surgery. Our preliminary evaluation validated the application via a peg transfer task, and also showed significant improvement in hand-eye coordination. Overall, we have demonstrated that OST-HMD based AR application provides ergonomic improvements, e.g. hand-eye coordination. In challenging situations or for novice users, the improvements in ergonomic factors lead to improvement in task performance. With continuous effort as a community, optical see-through augmented reality technology will be a useful interventional aid in the near future

Distant Operational Care Centre: Design Project Report

The goal of this project is to outline the design of the Distant Operational Care Centre (DOCC), a modular medical facility to maintain human health and performance in space, that is adaptable to a range of remote human habitats. The purpose of this project is to outline a design, not to go into a complete technical specification of a medical facility for space. This project involves a process to produce a concise set of requirements, addressing the fundamental problems and issues regarding all aspects of a space medical facility for the future. The ideas presented here are at a high level, based on existing, researched, and hypothetical technologies. Given the long development times for space exploration, the outlined concepts from this project embodies a collection of identified problems, and corresponding proposed solutions and ideas, ready to contribute to future space exploration efforts. In order to provide a solid extrapolation and speculation in the context of the future of space medicine, the extent of this project's vision is roughly within the next two decades. The Distant Operational Care Centre (DOCC) is a modular medical facility for space. That is, its function is to maintain human health and performance in space environments, through prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Furthermore, the DOCC must be adaptable to meet the environmental requirements of different remote human habitats, and support a high quality of human performance. To meet a diverse range of remote human habitats, the DOCC concentrates on a core medical capability that can then be adapted. Adaptation would make use of the DOCC's functional modularity, providing the ability to replace, add, and modify core functions of the DOCC by updating hardware, operations, and procedures. Some of the challenges to be addressed by this project include what constitutes the core medical capability in terms of hardware, operations, and procedures, and how DOCC can be adapted to different remote habitats

Advanced Knowledge Application in Practice

The integration and interdependency of the world economy leads towards the creation of a global market that offers more opportunities, but is also more complex and competitive than ever before. Therefore widespread research activity is necessary if one is to remain successful on the market. This book is the result of research and development activities from a number of researchers worldwide, covering concrete fields of research