An unified approach to teleoperation: human and robot integration

To increase the accuracy and the reliability of teleoperation, close interaction between human and the slave robot is required. Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) is developing a Humanoid robot, which has two 9-DOF arms, two 4-DOF hands, a 3-DOF waist and a 2-DOF neck. An automatic path planner which takes advantage of redundancy is also developed, but it requires huge computational power and time. For tasks which are 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 robot joint angles. For tasks interacting with unknown environment, teleoperation with force feedback is more useful. A simple platform-type master arm is designed based on the kinematic analysis of human. For force reflection, the pneumatic actuators are used. This device is integrated with KIST Humanoid robot as well as 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 reflecting master hand is also developed. These force reflecting 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 while giving position command to the slave robot. In addition to master arm/hand, visual information is feedback to human through HMD for higher interaction. Therefore, a new way of integration of human and the robot is developed