Real-time implementation of some bilateral teleoperation schemes

Abstract

Today's technology has pushed back many boundaries that we thought were impossible. One of these technologies is bilateral teleoperation. Bilateral teleoperation allows an operator to control a robot, at a distance, over a communication medium and get a feedback of the interaction forces between the robot's end-effector and the remote environment. This technology leads, for instance, to application in telesurgery, hazardous material handling and underwater repairs. Our main research is to compare different control methods for such a system using a six degree of freedom (DOF) parallel robot for the master device and a 6 DOF serial robot for the slave device. According to the choice of the transmitted variables over the communication medium, we attempt to show the inherent differences between transmitting position/sensor force information, velocity/control force information and, thereafter, wave variables. The Position Error Based (PEB) controller, the Kinesthetic Force Based (KFB) controller and the transmission of Wave variables are implemented. Experimental results with and without time delays present are carried out and compared. For our implementations a haptic device, based on the twin pantograph architecture, is used as a master manipulator, while the slave manipulator is a 6 DOF serial robot manipulator, the A465 Robot by CRS Robotics.