Human and Robot Integrated Teleoperation

For robot path generation, a lot of researches have been done including automatic path planning, and teaching/playback. Teleoperation is commonly used in order to control a robot from remote site, dealing with unknown environment. To increase the accuracy and the reliability of teleoperation, close interaction between human and the slave robot is required. Many force feedback devices and control architectures were investigated for this purpose. However, most of the force feedback master devices are as big as the slave robot and equipped with heavy actuators. Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) is developing a Humanoid robot, which has two arms (9 degrees of freedom for each), two hands (4 d.o.f each), a waist (3 d.o.f.) and a neck (2 d.o.f.) Automatic path planner which takes advantage of redundancy is also developed. However, it requires huge computational power and time to get the optimal solution. For some tasks, which is very complex, or interacting with environments, robot path can be generated very easily and accurately by human teaching, hence the automatic path planner is not required. Using sensors, human motion is analyzed and converted to the robot joint angles. For tasks interacting with unknown environment, teleoperation with force feedback is more useful. A simple exoskeleton type master arm is designed based on the kinematic analysis of human arm. For force re ection, the pneumatic actuators are used. This device is integrated with the KIST Humanoid robot as well as the graphic simulator, so that the master arm can be used for teaching the robot or as the virtual reality device integrated with the graphic simulator. Force re ecting master hand is also developed. These force re ecting master arm and hand are very light and compact so that a human can wear easily while he feels the same force as the robot does, giving position command to the slave robot.