An Approach to Telerobotic Manipulations

This artic1e introduces three concepts: 1) "te1efunctioning", 2) a contr01 method for achieving te1efunctioning, and 3) an approach to the ana1ysis of human-robot interaction when telefunctioning governs the system behavior. Telefunctioning facilitates maneuvering of loads by creating a perpetua1 sense of the load dynamics for the operator. We define telefunctioning as a robotic manipu1ation method in which the dynamic behaviors of the slave robot and the master robot are functions of each other; these functions are the designer's choice and depend on the app1ication. In a subclass of te1efunctioning cal1ed te1epresence, al1 of the re1ationships between the master and the slave are specified as "unity" so that al1 of the master and slave variables (e.g., position, ve10city) are dynamical1y equa1. To create telefunctioning, we arrive at a minimum number of functions re1ating the robots' variab1es. We then deve10p a contr01 architecture which guarantees that the defined functions govern the dynamic behavior of the system. The stability of the c10sed-100p system (master robot, s1ave robot, human, and the 10ad being manipu1ated) is ana1yzed and sufficient conditions for stabi1ity are derived.