Design and evaluation of an educational platform for implementing and testing bilateral control algorithms

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a new platform created in order to improve the learning experience of bilateral control algorithms in teleoperation. This experimental platform, developed at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, is used by the students of the Master on Automation and Robotics in the practices of the subject called “Telerobotics and Teleoperation”. The main objective is to easily implement different control architectures in the developed platform and evaluate them under different conditions to better understand the main advantages and drawbacks of each control scheme. So, the student’s tasks are focused on adjusting the control parameters of the predefined controllers and designing new ones to analyze the changes in the behavior of the whole system. A description of the subject, main topics and the platform constructed are detailed in the paper. Furthermore, the methodology followed in the practices and the bilateral control algorithms are presented. Finally, the results obtained in the experiments with students are also shown

Performance benefits of telerobotics and teleoperation - enhancements for an arm-based tank waste retrieval system

This report evaluates telerobotic and teleoperational arm-based retrieval systems that require advanced robotic controls. These systems will be deployed in waste retrieval activities in Hanford`s Single Shell Tanks (SSTs). The report assumes that arm-based, retrieval systems will combine a teleoperational arm and control system enhanced by a number of advanced and telerobotic controls. The report describes many possible enhancements, spanning the full range of the control spectrum with the potential for technical maturation. The enhancements considered present a variety of choices and factors including: the enhancements to be included in the actual control system, safety, detailed task analyses, human factors, cost-benefit ratios, and availability and maturity of technology. Because the actual system will be designed by an offsite vendor, the procurement specifications must have the flexibility to allow bidders to propose a broad range of ideas, yet build in enough restrictions to filter out infeasible and undesirable approaches. At the same time they must allow selection of a technically promising proposal. Based on a preliminary analysis of the waste retrieval task, and considering factors such as operator limitations and the current state of robotics technology, the authors recommend a set of enhancements that will (1) allow the system to complete its waste retrieval mission, and (2) enable future upgrades in response to changing mission needs and technological advances

Flexible and dependable manufacturing beyond xURLLC: A novel framework for communication-control co-design

Future Industrial 4.0 applications in the 6G era is calling for high dependability that goes far beyond the current ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC), and therewith proposed critical challenges to the communication technology. Instead of struggling against the physical and technical limits towards an extreme URLLC (xURLLC), communication-control co-design (CoCoCo) appears a more promising solution. This work proposes a novel framework of CoCoCo, which is not only enhancing the dependability of 6G industrial applications such as remote control, but also exhibiting rich potential in revolutionizing the future industry per openness and flexibility of manufacturing systems.Comment: Submitted to IEEE CASE 202

GoonDAE: Denoising-Based Driver Assistance for Off-Road Teleoperation

Because of the limitations of autonomous driving technologies, teleoperation is widely used in dangerous environments such as military operations. However, the teleoperated driving performance depends considerably on the driver's skill level. Moreover, unskilled drivers need extensive training time for teleoperations in unusual and harsh environments. To address this problem, we propose a novel denoising-based driver assistance method, namely GoonDAE, for real-time teleoperated off-road driving. The unskilled driver control input is assumed to be the same as the skilled driver control input but with noise. We designed a skip-connected long short-term memory (LSTM)-based denoising autoencoder (DAE) model to assist the unskilled driver control input by denoising. The proposed GoonDAE was trained with skilled driver control input and sensor data collected from our simulated off-road driving environment. To evaluate GoonDAE, we conducted an experiment with unskilled drivers in the simulated environment. The results revealed that the proposed system considerably enhanced driving performance in terms of driving stability.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Planetary Cliff Descent Using Cooperative Robots

Future robotic planetary exploration will need to traverse geographically diverse and challenging terrain. Cliffs, ravines, and fissures are of great scientific interest because they may contain important data regarding past water flow and past life. Highly sloped terrain is difficult and often impossible to safely navigate using a single robot. This paper describes a control system for a team of three robots that access cliff walls at inclines up to 70°. Two robot assistants, or anchors, lower a third robot, called the rappeller, down the cliff using tethers. The anchors use actively controlled winches to first assist the rappeller in navigation about the cliff face and then retreat to safe ground. This paper describes the coordination of these three robots so they function as a team to explore the cliff face. Stability requirements for safe operation are identified and a behavior-based control scheme is presented. Behaviors are defined for the system and command fusion methods are described. Controller stability and sensitivity are examined. System performance is evaluated with simulation, a laboratory system, and testing in field environments

Evaluation of Presence in Virtual Environments: Haptic Vest and User's Haptic Skills

This paper presents the integration of a haptic vest with a multimodal virtual environment, consisting of video, audio, and haptic feedback, with the main objective of determining how users, who interact with the virtual environment, benefit from tactile and thermal stimuli provided by the haptic vest. Some experiments are performed using a game application of a train station after an explosion. The participants of this experiment have to move inside the environment, while receiving several stimuli to check if any improvement in presence or realism in that environment is reflected on the vest. This is done by comparing the experimental results with those similar scenarios, obtained without haptic feedback. These experiments are carried out by three groups of participants who are classified on the basis of their experience in haptics and virtual reality devices. Some differences among the groups have been found, which can be related to the levels of realism and synchronization of all the elements in the multimodal environment that fulfill the expectations and maximum satisfaction level. According to the participants in the experiment, two different levels of requirements are to be defined by the system to comply with the expectations of professional and conventional users

Joint Platforms and Community Efforts in Surgical Robotics Research

In modern medical research and development, the variety of research tools has extended in the previous years. Exploiting the benefits of shared hardware platforms and software frameworks is crucial to keep up with the technological development rate. Sharing knowledge in terms of algorithms, applications and instruments allows researchers to help each other’s work effectively. Community workshops and publications provide a throughout overview of system design, capabilities, know-how sharing and limitations. This paper provides sneak peek into the emerging collaborative platforms, focusing on available open-source research kits, software frameworks, cloud applications, teleoperation training environments and shared domain ontologies

Open-Source Research Platforms and System Integration in Modern Surgical Robotics

In modern medical research and development, the variety of research tools has grown in the previous years significantly. It is crucial to exploit the benefits of shared hardware platforms and software frameworks in order to keep up with the technological development rate. Sharing knowledge in terms of algorithms, applications and instruments allows researchers to help each other’s work effectively. This is a relatively new trend in the traditionally closed domain of Computer-Integrated Surgery, where community workshops and publications are now providing a thorough overview of system design, capabilities, know-how sharing and limitations. This paper overviews the emerging collaborative platforms, focusing on available open-source research kits, software frameworks, cloud applications, teleoperation training environments and shared databases that will support the synergies of the diverse research efforts in this area