Transparent and Shaped Stiffness Reflection for Telesurgery

status: publishe

Spatial-Temporal Characteristics of Multisensory Integration

abstract: We experience spatial separation and temporal asynchrony between visual and haptic information in many virtual-reality, augmented-reality, or teleoperation systems. Three studies were conducted to examine the spatial and temporal characteristic of multisensory integration. Participants interacted with virtual springs using both visual and haptic senses, and their perception of stiffness and ability to differentiate stiffness were measured. The results revealed that a constant visual delay increased the perceived stiffness, while a variable visual delay made participants depend more on the haptic sensations in stiffness perception. We also found that participants judged stiffness stiffer when they interact with virtual springs at faster speeds, and interaction speed was positively correlated with stiffness overestimation. In addition, it has been found that participants could learn an association between visual and haptic inputs despite the fact that they were spatially separated, resulting in the improvement of typing performance. These results show the limitations of Maximum-Likelihood Estimation model, suggesting that a Bayesian inference model should be used.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Human Systems Engineering 201

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

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 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

Unstable Sense of Agency under Consistent Force Feedback

The present study undertakes an ecological approach to haptic interfaces grounded in the sense of agency that accompanies human action. The study had two aims. The first aim was to investigate the effect of two top-down cues (perceived initiation of action and presence of action options) on sense of agency in haptic interfaces. The second aim was to investigate the consistency of the sense of agency and answer the question whether consistent force feedback (bottom-up cue) is sufficient to grant stable experience of agency. The results of the study suggest that while high number of action options can be associated with stronger agency, low numbers of action options are unlikely to produce such effect, and that the cue of task completion might be critical for the sense of agency. The study also showed that sense of agency was relatively inconsistent, with the main source of uncertainty being computer-attributed agency. The discussion addresses issues of joint human-computer agency and the contribution of multiple sources of information to agency experience

Haptic teleoperation of the youbot with friction compensation for the base

Haptic devices are bringing new possibilities for teleoperation by increasing the level of awareness that the operator can have over the slave. In other words, they create a stronger link between them. Because it is not enough to have a view of the task at hand, it is better to feel what is really happening at the other side. The main goal of the project is to provide the KUKA youBot with an Omega 6 haptic interface. The operator can feel the movement limitations that the arm’s tooltip may be experiencing, resulting in a better driving practice. But with these new capabilities other concerns arise, like the choice of an appropriate control algorithm, the correct coupling of workspaces or the design of a suitable data handling scheme. However, the current setup has not yet been submitted to a proper system validation and so there is still much work to do in order to increase its overall performance. Since friction can have a major role in the control scheme of the system, the latter should be provided with friction compensation. To achieve this, a study of the youBot wheels motor block friction has been carried out. These results are then also incorporated in the robot simulation. Moreover, when identifying this kind of behaviours some important decisions have to be made in order to get the best results from the time invested. Among those are the selection of a friction model, the system identification experiments and the validation of results. In conclusion, it has been proven that the implementation of a haptic interface for the youBot is not only feasible but that it delivers a greater overall teleoperation experience. Also, although the results of this project are an initial version of the system, the friction compensation for the base motor blocks is already working with acceptable performance. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Los dispositivos hápticos están trayendo nuevas posibilidades a la teleoperación, aumentando el nivel de consciencia que el operador puede tener sobre la máquina que dirige. En otras palabras, crean un vínculo más fuerte entre ambos. Y es que a veces no es suficiente visualizar la tarea que se esta realizando, es mejor notar lo que realmente está pasando en el otro lado. El objetivo principal del proyecto es proporcionar al robot youBot de KUKA una interfaz con el dispositivo háptico Omega6. El operador puede notar las limitaciones en los movimientos que la herramienta del brazo robot pueda estar experimentando, resultando así en una mejor experiencia de conducción. Pero con estas nuevas capacidades aparecen otras preocupaciones, como elegir un algoritmo de control apropiado, la correcta unión de los espacios de trabajo o el diseño de un esquema de manejo de datos adecuado. Sin embargo, la instalación actual aún no ha sido sometida a una evaluación de sistema apropiada y por lo tanto todavía hay mucho trabajo por hacer para incrementar el rendimiento general. Ya que la fricción puede tener un rol importante en el esquema de control del sistema, este debería ser provisto con compensación de fricción. Para lograr esto se ha llevado a cabo un estudio de los bloques motor de las ruedas del youBot. Estos resultados se han incorporado también a la simulación del robot. Por otra parte, cuando se identifican esta clase de comportamientos se han de tomar decisiones importantes para obtener los mejores resultados del tiempo empleado. Entre estas están la selección de un modelo de fricción adecuado, los experimentos para identificar el sistema y la validación de los resultados. En conclusión, se ha probado que la implementación del youBot con una interfaz háptica no es solo posible sino que mejora la experiencia general de teleoperación. Además, aunque los resultados del proyecto son una versión inicial del sistema, la compensación de la fricción para los bloques motor de la base ya está funcionando con un rendimiento aceptable.Ingeniería Industria

Spectral Subtraction of Robot Motion Noise for Improved Event Detection in Tactile Acceleration Signals

New robots for teleoperation and autonomous manipulation are increasingly being equipped with high-bandwidth accelerometers for measuring the transient vibrational cues that occur during con- tact with objects. Unfortunately, the robot\u27s own internal mechanisms often generate significant high-frequency accelerations, which we term ego-vibrations. This paper presents an approach to characterizing and removing these signals from acceleration measurements. We adapt the audio processing technique of spectral subtraction over short time windows to remove the noise that is estimated to occur at the robot\u27s present joint velocities. Implementation for the wrist roll and gripper joints on a Willow Garage PR2 robot demonstrates that spectral subtraction significantly increases signal-to-noise ratio, which should improve vibrotactile event detection in both teleoperation and autonomous robotics