An experimental validation of electro-hydraulic transmission for haptic teleoperation - Comparison with thrust wire -

This paper proposes an experimental validation of electro-hydraulic transmission for haptic teleoperation. Haptic teleoperation is an emerging technology that is designed to transmit position and force sensations of a distant environment to the human hand. Heretofore, it has been considered in several applications such as plant reparation, space exploration or laparoscopic surgery. So far, flexible actuator using thrust wire is one of the most efficient way of transmitting haptic sensations. However, compensations of friction and backlash caused by deflection and shape changes of wire remain veritable issues. In this paper, we propose to connect two syringes through a hydraulic tube in order to achieve position tracking and force transmission between an electromagnetic motor and a remotely located end-effector. By that mean, flexibility of thrust wire is replaced by the flexibility of hydraulic tube, mechanical friction is replaced by viscous friction, and backlash is avoided by incompressibility of fluid. The validity of the proposal is verified experimentally.