Attaching a robotic manipulator to a flying base allows for significant
improvements in the reachability and versatility of manipulation tasks. In
order to explore such systems while taking advantage of human capabilities in
terms of perception and cognition, bilateral teleoperation arises as a
reasonable solution. However, since most telemanipulation tasks require visual
feedback in addition to the haptic one, real-time (task-dependent) positioning
of a video camera, which is usually attached to the flying base, becomes an
additional objective to be fulfilled. Since the flying base is part of the
kinematic structure of the robot, if proper care is not taken, moving the video
camera could undesirably disturb the end-effector motion. For that reason, the
necessity of controlling the base position in the null space of the
manipulation task arises. In order to provide the operator with meaningful
information about the limits of the allowed motions in the null space, this
paper presents a novel haptic concept called Null-Space Wall. In addition, a
framework to allow stable bilateral teleoperation of both tasks is presented.
Numerical simulation data confirm that the proposed framework is able to keep
the system passive while allowing the operator to perform time-delayed
telemanipulation and command the base to a task-dependent optimal pose.Comment: to be published in 2020 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation (ICRA