Design and Construction of a Portable Force-Reflecting Manual Controller for Teleoperation Systems.

摘要

A teleoperation system was constructed to work in uncertain, complex, and hazardous environments. The remote operator who controls this system is located at a safe venue and receives video information and also has access to a force reflecting robotic manipulator. The force reflecting robotic manipulator (manipulandium) provides a sense of telesensation to the operator, thus enhancing his situational awareness about the remote task being performed. Various controllers were used to assist the operator in the performance of the task in the remote environment, including fuzzy logic controllers and PID (proportional, integral, derivative) controllers. A GUI (graphical user interface) was built and integrated into this system and has many useful attributes including position scaling, force scaling, rereferencing, etc. which enables the system to work in various task paradigms including teach pendant operation as well as for manual control. A conceptual design was also presented for a three-degree of freedom force reflecting manual controller with four alternative configurations. Such a system presents an augmented virtual reality methodology to enhance the sense of presence of the operator at the remote environment when such environments are dangerous and not amenable for direct human involvement.