On-Off Control of a Passive Haptic Master During Teleoperation

The main function of haptic teleoperation is to provide the user with force feedback from a remote environment. Use of a passive haptic master complicates the replication of remote forces due to the limitations of passive actuators. An active master can drive its endpoint anywhere in the workspace and produce forces limited by the output of the motors. In a passive system the position of the master cannot be directly controlled; achievable endpoint forces are a function of velocity and geometry. The passive master used for this paper is a redundantly actuated planar haptic device actuated by three magneto-rheological (MR) brakes. The master teleoperates a linear motor over the internet, and each device is controlled using National Instruments (NI) hardware and LabVIEW software. A simple actuation scheme for the master is proposed and tested. The results show the limitations of the passive master under this control scheme and highlight the need for improvements.