Haptic-Guided Teleoperation of a 7-DoF Collaborative Robot Arm with an Identical Twin Master

Singh, Jayant; Srinivasan, Aravinda Ramakrishnan; Neumann, Gerhard; Kucukyilmaz, Ayse

Abstract

In this study, we describe two techniques to enable haptic-guided teleoperation using 7-DoF cobot arms as master and slave devices. A shortcoming of using cobots as master-slave systems is the lack of force feedback at the master side. However, recent developments in cobot technologies have brought in affordable, flexible, and safe torque-controlled robot arms, which can be programmed to generate force feedback to mimic the operation of a haptic device. In this study, we use two Franka Emika Panda robot arms as a twin master-slave system to enable haptic-guided teleoperation. We propose a two layer mechanism to implement force feedback due to 1) object interactions in the slave workspace, and 2) virtual forces, e.g. those that can repel from static obstacles in the remote environment or provide task-related guidance forces. We present two different approaches for force rendering and conduct an experimental study to evaluate the performance and usability of these approaches in comparison to teleoperation without haptic guidance. Our results indicate that the proposed joint torque coupling method for rendering task forces improves energy requirements during haptic guided telemanipulation, providing realistic force feedback by accurately matching the slave torque readings at the master side.

Citation

Singh, J., Srinivasan, A. R., Neumann, G., & Kucukyilmaz, A. (2020). Haptic-Guided Teleoperation of a 7-DoF Collaborative Robot Arm with an Identical Twin Master. IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 13(1), 246-252. https://doi.org/10.1109/toh.2020.2971485

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 11, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Feb 3, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-01
• Deposit Date: Feb 26, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 27, 2020
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Haptics
• Print ISSN: 1939-1412
• Electronic ISSN: 2329-4051
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 246-252
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/toh.2020.2971485
• Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction; Computer Science Applications
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4040504
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8979376
• Additional Information: © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.