Teleoperation Performance with a Kinematically Redundant Slave Robot

This paper studies the effects of three methods of kinematic redundancy resolution on teleoperation performance with a redundant slave robot in telemanipulation. First, we derived three kinematic redundancy control modes expressing different trade-offs between kinetic energy level, joint usage, and joint limit avoiding. To validate our algorithms we performed simulations, autonomous robot tests, and teleoperation experiments. The trade-off between kinetic energy level and joint limit index was clearly shown in the autonomous test. For teleoperation, 4 tasks and 7 indices were defined. A 3 dof pen-based master and 5 dof mini-direct-drive robot were used with position to position control in Cartesian space. Tasks were x, y, and z positioning and contact force control giving 2 dof kinematic redundancy in the slave robot. Overall, the inertia-weighted pseudo-inverse, proposed by Whitney in 1969, showed best performance, while the least square mode (using no inertial information) showed the worst performance. Acknowledgments: The authors would like to acknowledge the support of LG Production Engineering Research Center, Seoul, Korea, the US National Science Foundation, (grant BCS-090 58408), and technical support from Pietro Buttolo, Steven Venema, and Manuel Moreyra. T003 Submitted to International Journal of Robotics Research, Jan 96. Hwang & Hannaford T003 1/96 2